


The Bard of Morning's Hope

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Aurors, M/M, Mystery, Romance, Serial Killers, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 67,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bard of Morning's Hope is a seemingly unstoppable murderer stalking former Death Eaters and former Slytherins, enacting vengeance on them in an untraceable way. In the wake of Lucius Malfoy's savage death, Harry Potter becomes the Auror assigned to guard Draco and Narcissa Malfoy from a similar fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ice Crystals

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a prompt by Kain, who requested, among several other things, Harry being hired to guard Draco and Narcissa from a killer who was murdering Death Eaters in revenge, Harry having a good relationship with the Weasleys, and a slow-burn romance between Harry and Draco. This story should be somewhere between twelve and twenty chapters, and will be updated every Saturday.

Draco was proud of himself for retaining control when the Aurors asked him through the fireplace what had happened to his father. There were no words for the horror he'd felt on stepping into his father's bedroom and seeing Lucius Malfoy lying on his bed, turned to ice, and then seeing the ice melt the instant he touched it with his hand. His father would have no burial, no true funeral. His essence had soaked into the sheets of his great bed, the bed where his mother had slept soundly beside his father for decades, and he would never return.  
  
But the impatient Auror asking for details wouldn't want to hear about that, and Draco managed to speak calmly.  
  
"Your father is a victim of the Bard of Morning's Hope?" The attending Auror darted his eyes back and forth from the parchment he held to Draco with an air of someone who had other matters to attend to.  
  
"Yes," said Draco.  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
Draco clenched his hands. "As sure as I can be when I saw that bloody title emblazoned on the wall with ice," he said sharply. He'd seen it the minute he turned around from his father's melting body, and immediately cast a Preservation Charm on it so that it wouldn't melt in the heat of the fireplace beneath it.  
  
If he'd thought to do that when he walked into the room, if he'd thought to do that before he touched his father, maybe Lucius would still be alive. Or not alive, but capable of restoration.  
  
 _Just what I needed. A new nightmare._  
  
"Yes, that does narrow it down," said the inane Auror, still scribbling furiously. "What was the method of killing?"  
  
"He was turned into an ice statue, and he melted into the bed the minute I touched him," said Draco baldly.  
  
That at least made the Auror's hands tremble a little, and while his eyes were incredulous when they locked on Draco again, he was paying attention now instead of thinking about something else. "Ice statues don't usually melt, they usually shatter when they're tipped over, but otherwise, the wizard can still be recovered--"  
  
"I know that." Draco shut his eyes, but he did feel part of him unclench. That was true. He knew the spell for turning someone into ice, because Death Eaters had used it during the war, and the magic used was supernaturally cold. It wouldn't have melted at the mere touch of a hand, and so Draco wasn't the one responsible for his father's ultimate dissolution.  
  
"So this must have been a different kind of ice statue?"  
  
That was a new voice, and Draco opened his eyes and leaned in. Harry Potter was standing beside the first, incompetent Auror, his voice steady and his gaze locked on Draco's face as if he could see every secret hidden in Draco's mind.  
  
 _It's good for him, then, isn't it, that I don't have any secrets left after the war,_ Draco thought in irritation, and nodded. "Yes, Potter, it was. However did you figure it out?"  
  
Potter ignored him and turned back to the Auror who had taken the notes. "Get Grimstone. And Adbar. And alert Minister Shacklebolt."  
  
The other Auror bowed and took off, which made Draco sniff. Potter turned a professional face back to him, though, and Draco reckoned he could put up with this idiocy a bit if it meant he would get justice for his father. No one had accused Potter of failing to solve cases or capture the criminals. Draco was a bit surprised they hadn't put him on the case of the Bard of Morning's Hope already.  
  
"Can you tell me what you found?" Potter was drawing what looked like large lines down the center of the piece of parchment. Perhaps splitting it up into categories, Draco thought. At least Potter would probably be able to read his own notes later, which Draco couldn't have said for sure about the other idiot.  
  
Draco nodded tensely and began to speak. "My mother got up early this morning to attend a party given by a friend of hers. I usually eat breakfast with my father, but he was late getting up. I finally went to wake him up. If he sleeps--slept--too late, he'll be angry for wasting the morning."  
  
Draco heard the change in his own voice, and put his hand over his eyes. The sight of the ice statue finally whirled and diminished in his mind, replaced by something else: the fact that he would never see his father again, that he was _dead,_ that Lucius had survived the war and his sentence in Azkaban only to have this happen.  
  
"Malfoy? Are you all right?"  
  
There was a tone of genuine compassion in Potter's voice. Until Draco heard it, he hadn't realized how badly he _needed_ to hear it. Draco managed to raise his head and nod, although it felt as if his neck had a dozen creaking joints. "Yes. I am. I can describe what I saw to you. Just--give me a minute."  
  
Potter waited, with an iron patience that supported Draco more than he had realized patience could support someone. He breathed in a few times, then drew his head back and nodded at Potter. Potter nodded in return, and began to ask questions that Draco could answer with an unwavering voice.  
  
"Had your father received any threats from enemies recently?"  
  
"No." Draco shook his head. "Not even a Howler. The last one came more than a year ago."  
  
"Could he have received threats that he might not have shared with you or your mother?" Potter paused and looked up. "I'll need to interview her, too."  
  
"Of course," Draco murmured, and then realized, when he saw Potter start to write down his words, that Potter had taken them as the answer to the wrong question. "No, I meant that of course you can interview my mother. I know that Father would have shared anything with me. He was much less secretive after the war," he added, when he saw Potter opening his mouth.  
  
Potter considered him with shrewd eyes for a second, then nodded. "Your knowledge of your father takes precedence," he said, and went on to some other item on an invisible list. "One of the Bard's other victims had in fact received a package in the post shortly before his death, a portrait that no one else in the family knew he had commissioned. The portrait never came to life after he died, and then it went missing. Did your father receive anything else like that?"  
  
Draco snorted. "No. He didn't--he didn't have a portrait of any kind made." He felt a moment's sheer, dizzy sickness overcome him. He had lost his last chance to talk to his father, the way he could to some of his ancestors. But he cleared his throat and continued. "He always said that no artist could capture the true lessons he had learned, and he wouldn't want to have any portion of his awareness return in a portrait unless it could know everything he had learned."  
  
Potter gave a small smile, which didn't look mocking no matter how many times Draco studied it, and nodded. "All right, then. There's nothing else in the house that might have been a gift from a hostile enemy?"  
  
Draco shook his head. "No. The Aurors still check his post, make sure that he's not writing to anyone they disapprove of." He lifted his aching head and squinted at Potter. " _You're_ one, you should know."  
  
"It's not a duty that I've ever been placed on," said Potter, and Draco controlled the surge of resentment making its way up his chest. Of _course_ they wouldn't place the Great Harry Potter on a duty like that, in a position where he could have actually made a difference when it came to Draco's father. "But, all right. We don't think it was that." He made another note, and then stood. "I'll be over soon, Malfoy. Please don't touch anything in the room. There are clues that could be important, but only if they're left in exactly the right place."  
  
"Too late," Draco sneered, and Potter looked alarmed. "I already cast a Preservation Charm on that bloody title the _Bard_ is always leaving everywhere."  
  
But now, Potter's eyes shone as they widened. "You did? That's great!" At Draco's stare, he explained, "We haven't seen any of the signatures in a physical state before. They always get incinerated or melt or tatter or blow away before we get there, depending on what material they're made of. We've had to rely on Pensieve memories. You've already done something that might help avenge your father, Malfoy."  
  
Draco was still grappling with that praise when Potter looked him dead in the eye, and his voice softened. "And I know that I might not sound like it right now, with how professional I have to be, but I _am_ sorry for your loss."  
  
Draco started to lift a hand, started to shape a retort with his lips to ask what Potter could know about it, but then he stopped himself. If there was something Potter _did_ know, it would be the loss of a parent.  
  
"Thank you," he said a second later, because Potter was looking at him with a ridiculous curlicue of hair falling into his eyes and waiting for an answer, and the sooner Draco replied, the sooner Potter could be over here and making himself useful.  
  
Potter inclined his head, and then turned and hurried away. Draco shut the Floo and sat back, his eyes shut. He wanted to sit there and do nothing, until the tears finally overflowed and he lost the impulse to kick and scream and break things.  
  
But now that he wasn't speaking anymore, he could hear his mother weeping in the next room. She had to be blaming herself nearly as much as Draco. While Draco had thought his touch had melted his father, Narcissa had probably slept through at least part of the Bard's attack on Lucius. A ritual or spell that changed a wizard to ice, combined with the penetration of the wards, would have taken too long to start only after she'd left the bedroom.  
  
Draco stood up and went to comfort his mother, his mind turning on some grim statistics. This Bard of Morning's Hope was responsible for ten murders now, including Lucius's: Crabbe's and Goyle's fathers, both Lestrange brothers, Fenrir Greyback, Theodore's father, Yaxley, Montagu, Lucius, and a Slytherin sixth-year Draco had never paid much attention to, but who had fought with the Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogwarts. The girl and Montagu had never been formally Marked. That made it seem as if the Bard wanted revenge on everyone who had fought on the Dark Lord's side.  
  
And while _Draco_ knew the depth of the loathing he'd felt for the Dark Lord by the end of the war, and how his mother had only done what she needed to keep her family alive, he doubted anyone else would know that. Especially not a crazed, murdering fanatic.  
  
He had to wonder how long it was until his name, and his mother's, turned up in the papers, if this Bard--who struck through the strongest wards, inside locked rooms, through personal protective spells of any kind, and always without a struggle--couldn't be stopped.  
  
*  
  
"I intend to take this one personally."  
  
Kingsley sat up a little and frowned at Harry. Harry frowned back. He knew that he would win any argument with Kingsley if he had one, but he preferred not to argue. He would prefer Kingsley acknowledge what was happening right in front of him.  
  
"I see," said Kingsley. "And the dragon-egg smuggling case?"  
  
Harry, his arm planted along the back of his chair and his body twisted to the side so that he could cross his legs, shook his head. "What about it?"  
  
Kingsley sighed hard enough to make some of the people in the photographs on the walls look out at them. "You know very well that I counted on you to make some sort of difference in it, Harry."  
  
Harry leaned forwards and tapped a finger on Kingsley's desk. No one else would have been able to get away with that kind of informality in front of the Minister, but then, no one else had the kind of old, tested bond with Kingsley that Harry did. "And _you_ know very well that the Aurors have gathered all the evidence they need of who was doing the smuggling."  
  
Kingsley shut his eyes and turned his head away. "It would cause a political firestorm to arrest Dennis Creevey right now," he muttered. "He's the Speaker of the Muggleborn Legion, and their position is delicate--"  
  
"Strongly supported and delicate are not the same thing," Harry said, shaking his head. "And I know a few other people in the Muggleborn Legion who would be better choices for that Speaker position. Dennis is a fanatic. I understand why, and I respect his loss, but other people suffered losses in the war and didn't take up smuggling rare dragon eggs and possibly causing the extinction of a species."  
  
Kingsley looked so unhappy that Harry decided more honesty about that subject at the moment wouldn't do any good. "Anyway. I think I can provide better protection to the Malfoys than a lot of the other Aurors could." He left unspoken, as well, his general opinion about his colleagues, which Kingsley knew all too well.  
  
Kingsley gave him a steely gaze that told Harry he could hear the words anyway. "Even given your old rivalry with Draco Malfoy? You think you could provide unbiased protection?"  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Your time in politics is showing, Kingsley. It's not unbiased protection that's important. It's _effective_ protection."  
  
Kingsley leaned forwards, and he was in earnest now, if the direct look of his eyes was any indication. "I'm trying to protect you as much as anyone else, Harry. If something happened to the Malfoys while you were protecting them, you know some people would point to that rivalry and say--"  
  
"Nothing is going to happen to them while I'm protecting them."  
  
"You also know that this Bard can find his way past the strongest defenses, and there seems to be no way of stopping or slowing him down--"  
  
"Right," said Harry, and he was the one who held Kingsley's attention this time. "His existence offends me. There _ought_ not to be any case that we can't solve. We've failed to solve this one. People who ought to be arrested and tried by _us_ if their prison sentences weren't enough justice for their crimes, or if they've never served one, are instead being executed by this bastard. I want to stop that."  
  
Kingsley paused for a long moment, and then said, "All right. Yes. I can understand your point-of-view."  
  
Harry smiled and stood up. "Fine. Then I'll go over and conduct the initial investigation of Lucius's room, and then I'll inform the Malfoys that I'm staying on to guard them. I think I might move them to Grimmauld Place. The Manor has already been proved vulnerable, and my wards have that little special something I've added to them--"  
  
Kingsley lifted his hands and clamped them over his ears. "If you don't tell me about anything illegal, then I don't have to pay attention to it," he said, and began to hum.  
  
Harry laughed, bowed to Kingsley, and went to find the right Auror partner to take with him to Malfoy Manor. He couldn't take Ron, much as he would have liked to. Not for this. Ron could handle some of the investigating, like the comparison of this murder to the others, out of Malfoy's sight. But he would raise the tension of the situation too much right now.  
  
At least Harry knew he could count on Ron to do the investigation properly, if not to speak to the Malfoys without his temper getting the better of him. Some previous evidence in the Bard's cases had got "lost," and Harry didn't think it was the result of carelessness so much as political sympathies.  
  
But Ron had matured a lot, and Harry trusted him not to let his dislike of Death Eaters influence the investigation, no matter how much he might have thought some of the Bard's victims deserved what had happened to them.  
  
Harry lost his smile as he walked, and his eyes narrowed.   
  
_I'm going to catch this bastard. He won't stop on his own. It's too obvious that he thinks he's right, and some people don't even_ want _him stopped._  
  
 _But so far, he hasn't run into me._


	2. Blood On His Hands

"This is the bedroom where it happened."  
  
Draco fell back before the Aurors that Potter guided into the room, two of them with long red robes a slightly darker shade then normal--with black trim, Draco noticed a moment later--and a symbol on their chests that reminded Draco of the crossed bone-and-wand symbol of St. Mungo's. As the two Aurors began to cast careful spells on the bed and the icy announcement of the Bard's presence on the wall that Draco had preserved, Draco turned to Potter.  
  
"Aurors Grimstone and Adbar are experts in a new kind of magic that we've been developing," Potter explained quietly, his eyes on the two Aurors. His gaze did return briefly to Draco's face, and stayed there for a calm moment before leaving again. Draco found that he was also breathing more quietly after that glance. "They can sense the traces of a magical signature that isn't the victim's own, blood other than the victim's, cloth the murderer may have dragged in from elsewhere--anything that shouldn't be here. But they need to separate the victim's from the murderer's magical signature first. It takes a bit."  
  
"You're not in on this new magic?" Draco couldn't help the sneer in his voice. He was the only one who needed to know that he didn't mean it as much as usual. "I thought Harry Potter was always the first and the best at everything."  
  
"Oh, no," said Potter, with a faint grin, as though to remind Draco that he hadn't forgotten their sparring any more than Draco had. "I'm good enough at bodyguard work and leadership that they wouldn't think of putting me anywhere else. Which is why I'll be taking over your defense."  
  
Draco stared at him. Potter maintained the same expression, which was a triumph of sorts, and he turned to study Grimstone's and Adbar's experiments again. Draco looked, too, but all he could _see_ them doing was standing in front of the icy inscription of the Bard's name again and waving their wands gently back and forth like flower stems in a breeze.  
  
"That had better not mean what it sounds like," Draco said out of the corner of his mouth. "The wards on the Manor--"  
  
"Are inadequate," said Potter, his voice suddenly cooler. "The Bard defeated them. It's true that we don't know how he does that yet, but it does mean that you can't stay here. You _or_ your mother."  
  
"You think we're the next targets." Draco shifted uncomfortably. "But how can you know that? The Bard hasn't struck in any organized pattern." Even the Lestrange brothers had been killed separately, two victims apart from what Draco remembered, not right in a row.  
  
"I think that you're targets, not necessarily the next ones," said Potter. "But I can defend you. I told you, I'm good at bodyguard work." Draco caught a glimpse of that grin again. "And we'll be moving to my house at Grimmauld Place, where you'll be behind wards I've strengthened with something extra."  
  
"What something extra?" Draco demanded.  
  
Potter smiled.  
  
"I deserve to know, if I'm going to be behind them," Draco said, and lowered his voice savagely. "And my mother, too. Or have you forgotten that you owe her a life-debt?"  
  
"Oh, of course not," said Potter. "I'll do my best to save her life. But I do think that's best done by acting as I would in any other case, not forcing her to invoke and claim the debt." He finally faced Draco. "And I can't explain what I added to my wards any more than I can explain Grimstone's and Adbar's work. This time, I do understand the magical theory, but you probably don't."  
  
"Try me."  
  
Potter nodded. "All right, then." Draco had to scramble mentally a moment to make sure that he was on his feet and ready for the lecture, since he hadn't expected Potter to give in, but Potter continued, "It has to do with the tension between the new moon and the dark of the sun."  
  
"There is no dark of the sun," Draco promptly retorted.  
  
"Then perhaps I should stop explaining right here," Potter retorted back.  
  
Draco considered Potter's easy stance against the wall for a second, and then said, "All right. Then tell me what it is."  
  
"It's the moment when the sun is the farthest away from a particular point on the earth," Potter explained. "When the solar energy is least." He grinned at the sight of Draco's puzzled expression, and Draco tried to smooth it away and appear impassive but interested enough that Potter wouldn't stop his lecture.  
  
"It took a long time to set up," Potter said. "I had to cast part of the spell on the night of the new moon that was nearest the point when the sun would be farthest away, and then the other part of it when the dark of the sun arrived. Then I had to add extra spells that called upon the powers of darkness and cold."  
  
Draco blinked, rapidly. "That sounds like Dark Arts."  
  
"It's not," said Potter, and looked up as one of the other Aurors approached him. "Because no one studies astronomical magic anymore, and no one ever got around to forbidding it."  
  
Draco watched through half-lidded eyes as the Auror, probably Grimstone, spoke with Potter in an undertone. It was true that Astronomy at Hogwarts was largely confined to recognizing constellations and planets, and sometimes predicting what influence they _could_ have on magic. But no one ever seemed to actually use those rituals that were influenced by the rising of the full moon, or needed a precise point of sunset to work. Perhaps because they were too fussy and most wizards had easier methods of getting what they wanted now.  
  
It made Draco wonder why _Potter_ had studied it. Then he snorted. It was probably something Granger had looked up and nagged Potter about until he implemented the result on his house.  
  
Potter caught the snort and maybe Draco's look, but he said only, "Grimstone tells me that the attack didn't come through the wards."  
  
Draco blinked and stared at Potter. "I don't understand what that means. Of course the bloody Bard had to get through the bloody wards. Do you think we _invited_ him inside?" Even if the killer was another former Death Eater, which Draco couldn't believe given his list of victims, Draco had taken care to revoke all the exceptions to the wards that Lucius had put in place the minute his father went to prison. Lucius hadn't taken them back when he came home, either.  
  
Draco's eyes blurred abruptly, and he whirled away from Potter to drum a closest fist against the wall. Potter waited quietly until he turned back.  
  
"No," said Potter. "I don't mean that." The other Auror had already gone back to tapping slowly on the walls with his wand around Draco's parents' bed. "I mean that he came into the bedroom in a different way. It's the difference between coming into a house through an outside door and walking from room to room inside a house."  
  
Draco paused. "So he was already _in_ the house," he said, and his voice was dull.  
  
"Yes." This time, Potter pressed briefly against him, just a touch of shoulder to shoulder, as he slipped past Draco and out the door. Draco straightened up and tried not to shake. He thought he could manage it, if barely. "There was something here that brought him. An anchor. Perhaps he'd shed drops of blood inside the house, or left a piece of his hair here. Those would be the usual kinds of anchors."  
  
Draco rubbed his head wearily. He'd heard of what Potter was talking about before, but... "I thought it was only a theory. Sympathetic magic that strong. Magic that could tug you through the wards, and replace Apparition."  
  
Potter gave him a gentle glance. "No. Not anymore."  
  
*  
  
"If I knew something, I would tell it to you immediately, to bring the killer of my husband to justice. But I don't know anything."  
  
Sitting in front of Narcissa Malfoy, Harry was certain of that. She had the same sort of dignity he had seen in her when she lied to Voldemort about Harry being alive. She sat bolt upright in front of Harry, in a rocking chair, with a white shawl around her shoulders that looked like a mantle of snow. She kept her eyes grimly on Harry all the while, and the rocking chair didn't tremble once.  
  
Still, Harry had to do what he had to do, so he gave Narcissa a temperate smile and asked, "Tell me the story anyway? Sometimes we can pick out what the victims don't know they know. That's what we're trained to do."  
  
Narcissa gave him a frigid stare. Harry knew the ice wasn't for him, though, and he remained calm. Grimstone and Adbar were questioning Malfoy in another room about his impressions of the bedroom where his father had died. It was best to keep stories separate at first, so as not to have the witnesses convince each other of an impression that one of them might not have experienced, and Harry knew that he and Malfoy were still grating on each other in an uncomfortable way.  
  
"There is no possibility that I would lie," Narcissa said.  
  
"Not lie," said Harry. "Be mistaken."  
  
That only added an extra glaze of ice to Narcissa's features, and she sat up with her hands knotted in her robe. "Why are you here?" she asked. "From what Draco said to me, you cast no spells in the room upstairs, only observed what the others were doing."  
  
"I'm here to guard you, of course," said Harry simply. That seemed to catch Narcissa so utterly by surprise that she only stared at him, which gave Harry the chance to continue. "I'll be watching over you in Grimmauld Place for as long as necessary, until the Bard is caught and punished."  
  
"There is no sign that we'll be the next victims," said Narcissa, after a moment of thinking about it.  
  
"No," Harry agreed readily. "But it's a precaution, and my wards are stronger in a way that I know they need to be, now. Malf--Draco told you about my colleagues' conclusion that the Bard walked through the house by using something already inside the wards as a gateway?"  
  
Narcissa sniffed and gathered her shawl closer. "That magic is theoretical only, Mr. Potter. Impossible."  
  
"Not now," said Harry, and decided that he could reveal this. He was pretty bloody sure that Narcissa Malfoy wasn't the Bard of Morning's Hope. "We've had some Aurors, like Aurors Grimstone and Adbar, working on new techniques that tell them absolutely what kind of magic a murderer or other criminal used. And that's what they say happened here. If it's theoretical for the Aurors or the people we're trying to protect, it's not theoretical for the Bard."  
  
Narcissa looked at him with a turned-down mouth, so motionless that Harry started to stand in concern, thinking he might have to call Malfoy to his mother, even if interrupted the questioning that Adbar and Grimstone were doing. But in seconds, the expression had passed, and Narcissa sat up.  
  
"That is more of an answer than I had before," she murmured, "as far as the question of _how_ is concerned. And I will not forget that you brought it to me. I am ready to tell you what I can."  
  
Harry nodded back in relief and sat down. "All right. What time did you get up this morning to go to your engagement?"  
  
As he had expected, and as Narcissa herself had claimed, the details provided little help. Narcissa was certain that Lucius had still been alive when she left. For one thing, Harry thought, she would have noticed that he was an ice statue if Malfoy himself had been able to see that much from the bedroom door. There had been no icy signature on the wall, either, and that would have been noticeable to someone who was half-blind. The Bard always wanted his victims' families to know it was him.  
  
"Who is he?" Narcissa asked abruptly, when Harry had taken her through every step of the morning up until the point when she had left the house. Harry had thought she might start weeping as they discussed Lucius's death more and more, but instead, her eyes were ablaze with such anger it seemed to have burned up the tears. "Do you have _any_ clues in that direction?"  
  
Harry looked at her closely. "I'll tell you what I think," he said. "But that's not the same as what the Aurors are officially inclined to proclaim."  
  
"I do not care."  
  
 _No more does she,_ Harry thought in a little admiration. "And I have to have your promise that you're not going to run out and try to take vengeance based on this," he warned her. "That could be dangerous for everyone involved."   
  
Narcissa made an impatient little motion with her hand, still watching him. Harry accepted it and said, "I don't think there's any doubt that it's a Muggleborn. There were theories at first that it was a surviving Death Eater who blamed his own side for Voldemort's fall, but I don't think that. He would have targeted me first. All the ones we've found like that certainly _have_ targeted me."  
  
Narcissa blinked at him. "I did not realize that you had suffered assassination attempts."  
  
"We found it best not to publicize them except when they happened in front of a lot of witnesses." Harry shrugged at her stare. "What they wanted was renown and publicity for trying to destroy me. I'm pretty good at denying wizards who try to kill me what they want. I see no reason to break that tradition."  
  
He won a faint smile from her, as he had hoped he might. Then she said, "But you have no specific suspects?"  
  
Harry hesitated once, then said, "Someone who fought at the Battle of Hogwarts."  
  
Narcissa touched the shawl across her shoulders as if she might find the reason for that written in the strands, and then murmured, "Nothing like that has been reported in the papers."  
  
Harry shook his head. "Like I said, it's my own guess. I think that I might be wrong, and I don't want to risk causing anyone any distress until I know for sure whether it's right."  
  
"You will tell me now why you think yourself right."  
  
Harry hid a smile and nodded. Narcissa was no worse than some of the imperious Auror instructors he had worked with, and he had made them all respect him in the end.   
  
"The only people that the Bard's killed were all at the Battle of Hogwarts," Harry explained. "I didn't think that was true at first, but then I found out all the Death Eaters were there, even Theodore Nott's father, who was reported as being there only a year later. And that Slytherin girl the Bard killed was the same way. She wasn't Marked. Neither was Montagu, actually, although they only discovered that when he was buried. So it can't be that it was just Death Eaters, or even just people on Voldemort's side."  
  
"Mr. Potter," said Narcissa.  
  
It was the second time she had refused to grant him the title "Auror," but Harry wasn't that bothered. He understood why she wouldn't feel the title was important right now. "Yes?" he asked.  
  
"Please refrain from speaking that name around me." Narcissa sat up as though flame was coursing her and holding her back from topping forwards. "I do not wish to hear it, and I _despise_ looking like a coward."  
  
Harry was about to reassure her he didn't think she was a coward, but Narcissa caught his gaze, and he understood. She thought she looked like a coward when she flinched. No matter what Harry might tell her about what _he_ thought, she would prefer not to do it for her own self-image.  
  
"All right," said Harry calmly. "The people who fought in the Ministry for Snakeface haven't been attacked. Neither have some of the Death Eaters who had actually done more damage in the war, but were in Azkaban or injured and so didn't participate in the battle at Hogwarts. I believe it all comes back to that connection."  
  
"Why haven't you publicized these conclusions, then?" Narcissa now gazed at him like a hawk deciding whether to tear its prey apart right now or wait until it could really sink its claws into the prey's body and give it some pain.   
  
"Because I'm not _sure_." Harry spread his hands. "And until today, I had no primary involvement with this case. I did make the suggestion to the Aurors who are investigating it, and they promised that they would take it into consideration."  
  
"You are only telling me because...?"  
  
 _Because you asked,_ Harry thought, but that would sound ungracious. "Because your husband was just murdered," he said. _And anything that helps victims make sense of that situation can help._  
  
Narcissa considered it some more. Harry waited, but before she said anything else, the door opened, and Harry turned around.   
  
Grimstone and Adbar stood there, Malfoy between them. Grimstone, a heavyset Auror with a face befitting his name, nodded to Harry. "We're done with the questions, Auror Potter. You'll be moving the witnesses?"  
  
"Yes." Harry stood up and smiled at Malfoy, then turned the smile on Narcissa when Malfoy only stared at him. "I thought I'd extend an invitation to visit me behind my wards."  
  
It took a moment, but Narcissa inclined her head, and Malfoy followed her. "We accept your invitation," said Narcissa. "Only allow us to retrieve some small objects that we will need to feel more comfortable in your home."  
  
Harry nodded in silence, and stood back so that Narcissa could get past him. Meanwhile, he thought of the other reason that his suggestion about the Battle of Hogwarts was one that other people weren't eager to hear.  
  
It struck most of the Aurors as extremely unlikely that the killer was another Death Eater. Which meant, if they'd been at the Battle of Hogwarts, they were dealing with a _hero_ of that battle.  
  
Kingsley and several other people high up in the Ministry, committed to justice though Harry knew they were, were also a lot more politically sensitive than Harry was. He knew they didn't want to think about arresting a war hero any more than they did arresting Dennis Creevey right now.  
  
But Harry didn't care. When he had become an Auror, fiery-eyed instructors who _believed_ it had told him that the Aurors had an obligation to treat all criminals fairly, bringing them safe and alive to trial. They were arresters, not executioners; they _stopped_ things from happening. And Harry believed it as well.  
  
But that also meant that they had an obligation to see that all sorts of people could be criminals--even popular ones, even pretty ones, even ones who had done good in the past. They weren't to stop their investigations merely because the clues were leading them in a direction they didn't like.  
  
So he was going to stop the Bard. And he was going to do it whether that person was Muggleborn, half-blood, pure-blood, crazy or sane, war hero or not.  
  
 _If they don't, I will._


	3. Winding the Wards

“ _You_ are going to protect the Malfoys.”  
  
“That’s right,” said Harry, and used his cloak to buff his wand. “It’s a hard job, and it’ll be almost beyond my capacities. But,” and he spun around and pointed a solemn finger at Ron, who was standing behind his desk and looking utterly lost, “someone has to do it.”  
  
Ron didn’t smile, not that Harry had much expected him to. He only leaned forwards and stared hard at Harry. Harry sighed—well, he couldn’t  _always_ make his best friend laugh—and went back to reading the file that contained details on the Bard’s past victims, all neatly summarized and tucked in the same few sheets of parchment. He had left the Malfoys at their Manor under Grimstone and Adbar’s guard, to pack up what they wanted to take with them.  
  
“But Malfoy hates you,” Ron said.  
  
“I think we can get along when I’m in my professional persona,” Harry replied, not looking up.  
  
“You hate him.”  
  
“See above answer.”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes. Harry knew that without even looking up at him, because they were close like that. “You’re taking this too personally, you know,” Ron finally said. “Just because Kingsley won’t take your suspicions on one case doesn’t mean that he would refuse to listen to you if you came up with a theory about the Bard. And the problem with the other case is all the political shit, anyway. It’s not because Kingsley distrusts you.”  
  
Harry sighed, the tension between his shoulders loosening. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear someone else say it, even though he had told it to himself a hundred times a day. He turned around so he could meet Ron’s eyes.  
  
“I know that,” he said. “As far as the smuggling case goes, I mean. But I also told the team that’s spending most of its time on the Bard murders about a theory I had on that case, and they looked at me askance and said they would take it under consideration. I’ve never received any sign that they will.”  
  
Ron blinked. “What  _is_ that theory? Does it concern the Muggleborn Legion?”  
  
Harry took a moment to add some Locking and Silencing Charms to the door of their office, noticing the way Ron’s gaze sharpened. He didn’t call Harry paranoid, though. He knew as well as Harry that some people approved of the Bard and thought he was dishing out justice that should have come long since.  
  
“No,” Harry said, turning back to him. “It concerns the Battle of Hogwarts. All the people who have died participated in that battle, whether or not they had the Mark on them. And plenty of people who had the Mark on them haven’t died. But  _those_ people were all working in the Ministry or imprisoned or injured at the time.”  
  
Ron could figure it out easily enough from there. Harry watched as his mouth tightened, and he looked around once himself.  
  
“Do you suspect an Auror?” Ron whispered.  
  
Harry shook his head. “Not that many Aurors were at the battle, you know. And I know that I have alibis, and everyone else I can think of who was there and an Auror is someone I trust. Like you.”  
  
Ron gravely lifted his fingers in front of his face, and peered through them at Harry. “You never know,” he said, in a deep, spooky voice. “I could have a secret side as the Bard of Morning’s Hope, and  _you would never know._ ”  
  
“Yes, but Hermione would have figured it out and had you arrested by now,” Harry pointed out peacefully, and read the last detail that he needed to on the Yaxley case before he put the file back on his desk. It would grow, with the Malfoy case to be added, but Harry could ask the remaining Malfoys if he really needed to know something about that. “You’ll visit, I hope? I’m going to rely on you for unbiased information.”  
  
Ron wrinkled his nose. “I have to visit Malfoys?”  
  
“And me, you git,” Harry told him. “I can be in one room, and the Malfoys can be in the other, connected to be me by a Monitoring Charm.”  
  
Ron paused, and eyed him sideways. “Monitoring Charms,” he said, in a soft, wondering voice. “You  _are_ taking this seriously, aren’t you?”  
  
“I am,” Harry said flatly, and met Ron’s eyes. “No one else in that family is going to die. I might not be able to do a lot if the Bard strikes elsewhere, but I  _am_ going to save the remaining Malfoys’ lives.”  
  
“Do they know they’ve become part of one of your crusades?” Ron asked, and a small, unholy smile of glee crept up his mouth.  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Harry primly, and swirled his cloak the rest of the way around him, then checked inside his desk. He found a few of the toys that he had sometimes had to take along on cases, and tucked them into his pockets.  
  
“Those crusades where you make a vow and then keep it.” Ron circled around his own desk and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “The kind of vow that you  _didn’t_ make when you were working on the smuggling case, and I’m glad, because by now their choices would have been to arrest Dennis or arrest you.”  
  
“You know that I only do what I’ve promised to do when I don’t think other Aurors can solve the case or there’s not a better way.” Harry raised his eyebrows at Ron. “And who helps me in those little ‘crusades?’”  
  
“My other secret side,” Ron said promptly. “The one Hermione knows all about and scolds me for indulging. The one that still wants to go on adventures and learn secrets even after all the times at Hogwarts that we faced danger doing that.” His face softened, and he gave Harry’s hand a hard wring. “You’ll tell me if you need help.”  
  
“Of course,” Harry said quietly. He and Ron didn’t always work together now, even though they had desks in the same office; Kingsley had said that he didn’t want them “reinforcing each other’s bad tendencies,” which in practice meant Harry ran off to break the rules and Ron followed. But he knew he could call on Ron for anything, even coming over to a creepy old house to help him guard Malfoys, and Ron would answer the call. That was the kind of friend he was.  
  
“Good.” Ron looked him in the eye one more time, then stepped back with a salute and a nod. “Then go knock them dead. Or at least the Bard.”  
  
Harry smiled back, turned, and walked out with his determination gathering around him like an invisible stormcloud. The Bard would find Harry waiting for him no matter how hard he tried to come into the house.  
  
 _And not just because of the wards, either._  
  
Harry put his hand on his pocket, and smiled.  
  
*  
  
“You don’t think we’re going to  _stay_ here, do you?”  
  
Draco wrinkled his nose and looked around the kitchen. He wasn’t going to complain aloud, like his mother was currently doing, but he didn’t think he needed to. Potter would be able to see the disdain written openly on Draco’s face, after all.  
  
The kitchen had blank, bare walls. Draco supposed that they might once have been papered or paneled, but all of that was gone. Now there was only utterly bare wood, or plaster, or whatever lingered behind the walls of most normal houses. Draco knew it would have been marble at Malfoy Manor, but then again, he’d never lived in a normal house. Thank Merlin.  
  
“Of course I don’t expect you to stay in the kitchen,” said Potter, in a slightly scandalized tone that made Draco look immediately, and suspiciously, at him. Potter handed his cloak to a house-elf who appeared and disappeared so fast that Draco didn’t get a good look at it, and smiled blandly at Draco’s mother. “I have a space upstairs that’s prepared in a way I hope you’ll like. I did some protection spells, but Kreacher did the vast majority of the cleaning.”  
  
“Kreacher is your elf?” Narcissa rearranged the shawl over her shoulders in a way Draco knew well. His mother had started wearing a shawl during the war, when so many rooms of the Manor seemed so cold and empty even when the Death Eaters weren’t in them, but she had kept it after the war because it was so useful for making a point. She was going to make a big point, from the way she was shuffling it now.  
  
Potter nodded. “And most of the rest of the house is well-kept. This is just a renovation project I started and haven’t got around to finishing.” He waved his hand at the kitchen.  
  
“Why not, Potter?” Draco managed to find his voice. “I would think the kitchen would be a particularly important room for you.”  
  
“Why’s that?” Potter twisted his head and glared at Draco with narrowed eyes that made Draco feel he’d scored a point, although he didn’t know much about why.  
  
“Because you’re not good at potions, and you probably require far more than one try at good cooking,” said Draco coolly. “Or did some explosion here necessitate removing the paper, rather than your renovation project?” Yes, Draco was almost certain it had been paper on the walls, and not something else.  
  
But Potter only laughed and shook his head. “Kreacher does my cooking for me,” he said, and began to lead the way towards the far door out of the kitchen, his head twisted back as if he wanted to make sure that Draco and Narcissa were following instead of lingering in his precious ripped-up room. “I don’t spend a lot of time here, anyway.”  
  
Draco caught up with Potter easily. His mother was walking slowly, probably looking at changes in the walls and doors that Draco didn’t know about and wouldn’t care about if he did. “And yet, you strengthened the wards and proposed to bring us here,” he muttered to Potter.  
  
Potter shrugged. Draco was beginning to wonder what it would take to make a dent in his armor. “I did strengthen the wards back when I was living here all the time and not spending so much time at the Ministry. And it’s a safe place. I don’t mind staying here while I guard you, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
“I’m  _so_ glad.”  
  
Potter finally did stop at the base of a set of stairs that looked as though they’d last been scrubbed some time in the nineteenth century, and faced him. “I was unaware that I’d done anything particularly bad to you since school, Malfoy,” he said, and folded his arms. “Why are you lashing out like this?”  
  
“Because my father was  _bloody murdered,_ and you aren’t acting normal?” Draco snarled back. “I just want one thing that’s  _normal_.”  
  
A second later, he winced. He hadn’t really meant to reveal that, or not so bluntly.   
  
Potter’s eyes softened, though, and he nodded. “I reckon I can see why you’d want that,” he said, and touched a quick hand to the wall by Draco’s hand, although he didn’t actually touch Draco. “Well. Come on, then, and I’ll be a little more brusque.”  
  
Against his will, Draco smiled. Potter escorted him upstairs, pausing to point out the library and a bathroom. Then he nodded to a door near the end of one corridor and said, “That’s my room. It was my godfather’s. I’m going to put you in there. I’ve enlarged it and added a second bed.”  
  
“Where will you sleep, then?” Draco looked around. There were plenty of other doors. He had been sure that Potter would choose separate bedrooms for them. “And why not put us up in some of these rooms?”  
  
“It’s easier if you stay together,” said Potter. His eyes hardened. “The Bard seems to attack his victims when they’re alone, most often. I’d rather not hear a scream and be guarding the wrong person. This way, I’ll be equally close to both of you.”  
  
Draco winced again, but in silence. He hadn’t thought Potter would lay it out that bluntly.  
  
A second later, Potter winced, too, and glanced guiltily at him. “And anyway,” he added, “the room’s bigger, now. I can sleep on the floor.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “No third bed for you?”  
  
“Not  _that_ big,” said Potter, and his tone was a little brusque. Draco thought it was on purpose. “Not that I’ll be doing that much sleeping, at first. Anyway. Come see.” He flung open the door of the room.  
  
Draco stepped in and turned around, blinking. The room was large and well-lit, the sun flooding through windows that he’d had no idea existed. Of course, one could do wonderful things with wizardspace…  
  
He turned to Potter and cocked his head. “Did you put these windows in?”  
  
Potter nodded. “When I enlarged the room, yes.” He crossed it and lifted one of the panes, then knocked on something Draco couldn’t see. “And shutters that take part in the strengthened wards. Draw your wand and fling a spell at it.”  
  
Draco drew his wand, but hesitated. “If I get knocked down because the spell bounces back at me, the Ministry will have a lawsuit on their hands.”  
  
“I know that,” said Potter, and stepped aside. “That’s not the effect the wards have. You can see if it you just fling the spell.” And then he locked his hands behind his back and looked at Draco with patient attention, as if he wanted to see what Draco was going to do next as a kind of experiment.  
  
Draco snorted with exasperation and aimed his wand. He had heard his mother arrive in the doorway behind them, but he didn’t see the need to turn around and look at her. She would have heard most of Potter’s words, and he knew she would probably like sleeping in the same room as him rather than alone. “Lawsuit,” he reminded Potter, and used a Blasting Curse on the center of the window, where Potter had knocked on the invisible shutter.  
  
He made the spell nonverbal, just to test how strong Potter’s wards really were. They wouldn’t be much use against the Bard, who used magic that no one even knew how to classify, if they didn’t stop nonverbal spells.  
  
Draco tensed as the magic shone in the middle of the shutter for a moment. Despite Potter’s reassurance, he was still ready to dive aside, and he watched in confusion as, instead, the spell only surged back and forth in the middle of the shutter, forming a shape that looked oddly like the lightning bolt scar on Potter’s head.  
  
Then it faded away.  
  
Draco glanced at Potter, who smiled back at him. “The tension I told you about, between the sun and the moon, tugs at the spells that hit the wards until any power is shredded to pieces,” Potter explained.  
  
Draco nodded slowly. Whatever caused it—and he wasn’t entirely sure he believed Potter’s explanation, which he could be using to protect an even greater secret—the effect was a great one. Now he felt a little better about being here, and having his mother with him as well.  
  
“We will need cupboards for our clothes,” said his mother, her voice calm and cool in a way that Draco envied. “And we will need a place to put the photographs and other treasures we brought.”  
  
Draco sighed a little. He knew what she meant. She had brought several photographs of Lucius, since they had no portrait. She would want to put them up and look at them.  
  
 _And why not? He was alive this morning. Now he’s…not_.  
  
Draco had to sit down abruptly on the bed that stood nearest the door, because he was shaky. Potter cast him a soft glance, but Draco glared back before he lowered his face into his hands. He meant what he’d said about Potter acting stupidly and making things harder for Draco when he did.  
  
“I left the trunk at the foot of the stairs,” said Narcissa.  
  
Draco sighed. He knew why she was saying that, and he thought even Potter might be grateful to her as he nodded and slipped out the door. Draco lay back limply on the bed and sighed towards the ceiling. His mother sat down on the bed next to him, and there was silence for a moment.  
  
“Did Potter share with you his suspicions regarding the Bard’s nature?” Narcissa asked abruptly.  
  
“No,” said Draco, blinking at her. He wondered what suspicions Potter could possibly have. He didn’t have the special training that the Aurors who had investigated his father’s bedroom did. By Potter’s own admission, he was trained as a bodyguard, and nothing else. Draco reckoned that would impress some people, but Draco didn’t think it would lead Potter to find someone who had killed so many.  
  
“He thinks all the deaths are linked back to the Battle of Hogwarts.” His mother took off her shawl and deposited it carefully on the bed.  
  
Draco thought about it. Yes, he reckoned he could see that. And that meant…  
  
“Someone could follow the trail back and find out who was there and unaccounted for,” he murmured.  
  
“I promised Potter that I would not seek out vengeance,” said Narcissa. “He said it would make his job of guarding us harder. And you know that your father would not want us to try and seek revenge at the expense of staying alive and preserving the family name.”  
  
Draco nodded absently, but his mind was ranging ahead. He wondered what in the world the person who sought revenge on the Death Eaters was blaming them for. A specific death? Being there at all? Destroying Hogwarts?  
  
“I won’t do anything that could place me in danger,” he said. “Owl a few people. Ask for newspapers that print the full list of the dead. We might be able to figure out from last names which relatives are still alive.”  
  
Narcissa gave him a smile cold and bright as the moon. “Yes,” she said softly. “I knew you would have some ideas.”  
  
Draco took a deep breath and sat up. So. He had a plan. He had something he could do. His fate wasn’t completely dependent on Potter. It wasn’t that Draco really distrusted Potter, but he did want to have a way to be independent of him.  
  
And find this bloody Bard.  
  
 _Father, I promise you. We are going to find him._


	4. Visitors

Harry came downstairs, rolling his shoulders. He had carried the Malfoys’ baggage slowly up the stairs, because he had wanted them to have time to themselves, or time to stop talking about him—if that was what they were doing. But that had meant doing it without a helpful charm, and  _that_ meant strained shoulders.  
  
Worse, it didn’t seem to have worked. The Malfoys had stopped and stared at him with almost identical expressions when he carried the trunks in, and Harry had been left feeling as if this wasn’t his home. Going downstairs to get tea had seemed like a genius idea, even when both Malfoy and his mum refused tea. At least Harry would get something warm in his stomach and down his throat, and he would have at least a few moments of privacy.   
  
He hadn’t even reached for his cup, though, before the fireplace whooshed. Harry turned around in surprise, but he had to smile when he saw Molly Weasley’s face in the flames.  
  
“Harry.” Molly smiled back at him. “How are you? Do you still want me to bring that dinner I promised through?”  
  
“Please,” Harry said, and he thought it was the fervent tone in his voice that made Molly laugh. A second later, she clucked her tongue.  
  
“You look as if you’ve had a tiring day, dear,” she said, and began to reach off to the sides, where Harry knew she would have the dishes standing ready with the dinner. Molly said she couldn’t get used to cooking for less than nine people, even though most of her children didn’t live in the Burrow now, so there were always leftovers Harry was more than happy to take off her hands.  
  
Especially since he knew that she was more than capable of cooking exactly as much food as she wanted, and that Ron tended to drop in more than once a week, and sometimes Ginny and George were there for dinner, too. Harry just liked seeing how much Molly cared for him, even now.  
  
“Well, there’s been that latest murder in the Bard case,” Harry said, listening with appreciation to the clattering of the dishes. “Lucius Malfoy, this time. And I want to catch the bastard, so I’m housing the remaining Malfoys with me.”  
  
Molly paused. Harry expected some kind of negative reaction, but instead, her eyes lit up. “Good. I’ll bring over some of my new recipes, then.”  
  
“You  _want_ to feed them?” Harry blinked. Even knowing how incredibly generous Molly was, this was the family that the Weasleys had had a blood feud with for a long time.  
  
“I want to use them as test subjects,” Molly said, with a faint smile. More dishes clattered. “I made a cake last night that multiplied itself, somehow, and neither George nor Ginny would touch it. Ginny’s talking about keeping her weight down as a Seeker, and George said that he can’t afford to have the magic in the cake mingling with his and causing havoc in the shop.” Molly clucked her tongue again. “So I thought I would get rid of both extra food and magical food.”  
  
Harry had to grin, and he went on making the cup of tea. That was one of the few things that Molly didn’t try to bring through the Floo. Even the supernatural feats of balance that made her able to carry dishes apparently wouldn’t let her carry liquids with that kind of ease.   
  
A few minutes later, Molly slid through the fireplace with steaming plates on both arms, her shoulders, and her head, and more floating behind her. Harry hurried to take them from her, enchanting the ones she was carrying so they flew. He knew that she liked to carry them herself to test the temperature and because she could make sure that the vulnerable food was more securely carried than it would be in a bobbing dish, but Harry preferred food to land on the table and not the floor.   
  
 _Even if it’s colder that way,_ he thought, and exchanged smiles with Molly as he got the last plate settled. “Let me call the Malfoys, then,” he said, and paused to stare at a large platter loaded with several dozen small cakes, all of them covered with black icing. “That’s the cake that duplicated itself?”  
  
“Yes, and a terrible time I had shrinking it, too,” Molly said, and sniffed. “And this morning, Arthur refused to eat them. As though he hadn’t eaten plenty of magic, what with how often I use it to cook!”  
  
“I’ll be the brave one,” Harry said, and ignored Molly’s mock glare as he reached for one of the cakes and brought it to his mouth.   
  
He felt the sweet sting of the icing along his tongue, and for a moment wondered what the fuss was about. It tasted pretty normal to him, although it did seem as though there was a thickness to the icing, as though it was really smeared around the back of the cake instead of in the front or something—  
  
A second later, he choked, and staggered. Yes, there was a  _lot_ of magic in that cake, and the various spells were all bursting in his mouth like fireworks. Harry thought about spitting out the cake, but he couldn’t do that. It would hurt Molly. He rode through the miniature pains that the spells offered him in silence.  
  
And after another few seconds, it wasn’t that bad. The spell effects faded away into nothing more than the pop and snap of spice, and the sweetness came back. It was more startling than anything else. Harry moved his tongue around his mouth and cautiously swallowed.  
  
“Now, was that so bad?” Molly spread her hands imploringly. “I ask you.”  
  
“I’ll eat them,” said Harry, and carefully set the plate aside. “Because they’re good. But I’m not sure that I should give any to the Malfoys. They might think  _I’m_ the one trying to assassinate them.”  
  
“What was that, Potter?”  
  
Harry started. Malfoy had come down the stairs and into the kitchen so quietly that Harry hadn’t heard him, and now he was standing turning his head back and forth from Harry to Molly, going redder and redder in the cheeks.  
  
“I brought food for you,” said Molly, acting as though Draco was—was Percy, Harry realized with a start. Percy had alternated since the war between acting abjectly sorry and acting as though he thought certain things he’d done, like his devotion to the Ministry, were still right. Molly had countered that by adopting an attitude of unwavering calm. “I thought you must be hungry. But Harry doesn’t think you or your mother ought to eat the cakes. They’re too full of magic, and they sparked in his mouth.”  
  
“Ow,” Harry added, and traced his tongue back and forth behind his teeth, which he thought must be blackened from the cake’s internal fire.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Harry looked away and attended to his tea so he wouldn’t say anything. On the one hand, he knew how hard it must be for Malfoy, whose emotions would be swinging back and forth. Merlin knew that Harry had felt that way when Sirius died, and he hadn’t had Sirius for nearly as long as Malfoy had had his father.  
  
On the other hand, he could stop behaving as if Harry and anyone else who came into the house  _was_ the Bard of Morning’s Hope. It was more than a little annoying.  
  
“Fine,” said Malfoy, and turned back to Molly. “I’d like some of the food to take up to my mother. She’s feeling too weak to come down the stairs right now.”  
  
Harry started to ask, “What—” A few of the Bard’s victims had died of poisoning, and there was the chance that the Bard could have spread some silent poison before he left the house. Narcissa had looked perfectly competent to climb the stairs earlier.  
  
He shut his mouth as Molly stepped on his foot. Molly was nodding and piling the small sandwiches of cucumbers and pickles up in the middle of a tray. “Of course. Here you are.” She held out the plate to Malfoy. Harry watched appreciatively. Molly really was acting the way she did with Percy, minus the “dear” that she usually attached to sentences addressed to Percy.  
  
 _Give her time, and she might even be able to do that,_ Harry thought. He knew Molly got along with those that appreciated her cooking.  
  
Malfoy took the tray slowly, and let his eyes travel over the mounds of food. “You cooked this?” he said.  
  
“That’s right,” said Molly in a neutral voice.  
  
Malfoy’s hands tightened on the tray, and for a second, Harry thought he might reject the whole meal. Which was the point where Harry stepped in, because enough was enough.  
  
“And it’s a good thing she did, because I need to add some more strength to the wards, and that always leaves me too exhausted to cook,” he added blandly, and drained his teacup. “We won’t want for food while we have this.” He smiled at Molly and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Thanks.”  
  
“I thought your house-elf—”  
  
He probably had told Malfoy that, fool that he was. Harry shrugged, pretending unconcern. “Well, he does make me food, and I do eat it. But this is better than you’re going to get from Kreacher. He has some peculiar tastes sometimes.” He winked at Malfoy and Molly, and threw his cloak over his shoulder. “I’ll be back in an hour.”  
  
Malfoy stiffened up and moved out of the kitchen with his platter. Molly shook her head at Harry. “That wasn’t nice, dear.”  
  
“I couldn’t bear him standing there and treating you like shit,” Harry hissed back. “He can eat it or not eat it, but he’s not going to haul that old blood feud in here and make it about that when it should be  _gone_.”  
  
Molly looked at him thoughtfully. “I agree, dear, but I don’t know if Ron or the others will, when they visit.”  
  
“There’s a difference, though,” said Harry, and opened the outer door. “I can sit on Ron.”  
  
“I’m going to go home and cook some more,” said Molly, and cast a Preservation and Warming Charm on the food, then came over to kiss him on the cheek again. “It looks as though Mrs. Malfoy might need some delicacies.”  
  
Harry smiled. “She might appreciate them, if she ever comes down the stairs.”  
  
He hugged Molly back, and then stepped out and aimed his wand at the wards. What he had told Malfoy about strengthening them with astronomical magic was perfectly true, but he also needed to think about what other defenses might stand against the will of the Bard.  
  
After a second of hesitation, he decided.  _I know perfectly well what I’m going to do. Why don’t I go ahead and do it?_  
  
And then he began to cast the crackling, sparkling silvery magic that he knew the Bard wouldn’t suspect, because Harry, technically, wasn’t supposed to have it.  
  
*  
  
“The food is from Molly Weasley,” Draco said, and didn’t slam the tray down on the edge of the table near the two beds only because he knew his mother wouldn’t appreciate the noise and the mess flying everywhere. She could tell how angry he was from his voice, and didn’t need a further demonstration.  
  
Narcissa took a moment to study his face, then looked back at the food and said, “It doesn’t  _look_ poisoned.”  
  
“Yes, but who can tell what the Weasleys might do?” Draco sat down and raked his hand through his hair. Truth be told, he didn’t know why he was so angry, why the suffocating waves of rage were rushing through him, and he didn’t know how to suppress them, either.  
  
 _All right, so it’s probably a reaction to Father’s death._  
  
But knowing that didn’t  _help_. And Draco didn’t want to alienate Potter, who was their only protection, but he didn’t want to put up with Weasleys dropping in to gape or taunt them, either.  
  
Narcissa quietly cast a few detection spells on the food, which consisted of sandwiches and a bowl of soup with multiple spoons, and then nodded. “Too much pepper in the soup. I’ll have to avoid it. Other than that, it looks fine.”  
  
Draco grudgingly picked up one of the sandwiches. He bit into it, and it tasted fresh and good. That only increased his resentment.  
  
“Draco.”  
  
He looked up. His mother had a sandwich on her lap, on top of a napkin that she must have Transfigured from one of the handkerchiefs she frequently carried, and she had a restraining hand stretched out to him as well.  
  
“I know what you are feeling,” said Narcissa, and for just a moment her eyes closed. “But we need to retain cool heads and neutrality towards Potter and his friends as much as we can. It was none of  _them_  who killed Lucius.”  
  
“How sure can you be?” Draco asked bitterly, and tore open his sandwich to pick at the cucumbers. “After all, Granger might be smart enough to figure out a way past our wards, and the Weasleys have hated us for a long time. They had—well, George Weasley and his brother created that swamp in Hogwarts that it took the professors forever to get rid of. The remaining one might be able to imitate the Bard’s magical effects.” He finally looked his mother in the eye and spoke what he was most afraid of. “What if Father wasn’t a victim of the Bard, but a personal enemy? Someone who took the chance to kill him and just make it  _look_ like the Bard?”  
  
“If that was the case, then I think we would have found more traces.” His mother’s smile was hard and bitter, and didn’t touch her eyes. “The Bard is the only one who can break through wards so untraceably, and kill a wizard as powerful as your father—was in such a short amount of time. If there were two wizards, someone would have more of an idea of how he did it.”  
  
Draco found himself unwilling to let go of the idea. “And if this person was a friend of Potter’s, and he recognized their handiwork when he arrived, but didn’t let on?” He shoved the cucumbers around on the bread for a moment. “How can we trust  _anything_  Potter says?”  
  
His mother leaned across and touched his hand gently. “You mustn’t let yourself take on so, Draco,” she said, and her smile was kind but compelling. “I know this is hard. I  _know_ it. But the chances are vanishingly small, and in our quest for vengeance, we must look for real possibilities.”  
  
“Chances and coincidences pile up where Potter’s concerned,” Draco muttered darkly.  
  
His mother held his gaze for a moment. “And do you believe that he would be so eager to sacrifice his Auror career and everything else for the sake of protecting a murderous friend?”  
  
About to say that Potter would do anything to protect a friend, Draco hesitated. It was also true that Potter was annoyingly pure about his cause of good, or had become so since the war. He arrested Muggleborn criminals right along with pure-blood ones, and didn’t seem to care that some of the people who had lost their reputations when he investigated them were ones he’d helped during the war.  
  
“I don’t know,” he muttered.  
  
“Look for chances and coincidences closer to home,” Narcissa told him softly, and picked up her own sandwich again. “Do what you must to find revenge for Lucius, but don’t search far afield until you have to.”  
  
Draco reluctantly admitted there was something to that, and went back to his lunch. The sandwich being absolutely delicious didn’t actually soothe his feelings.  
  
*  
  
“Auror Potter.”  
  
Harry stopped, glad that he was at a point in the tracing of his wards where that wouldn’t be fatal. And he was more than surprised to see who stood in front of him, staring at him somberly from beyond the edge of the property.  
  
“How are you, Dennis?” Harry watched Dennis Creevey carefully. It was true that the Aurors wouldn’t move on the evidence Harry had handed them about Dennis being linked to the smuggling case, but Dennis might have known Harry was the one urging the Aurors to do so. And that meant it was a good idea to beware of him.  
  
“I’m fine.” Dennis hesitated, then paused and tossed his long blond hair out of his eyes. He had grown into a tall man who apparently was strong enough to hold his own in wrestling competitions the Muggleborn Legion sponsored and win, although he was a bit stoop-shouldered for Harry’s taste. “I just—I just want you to know—”  
  
“Yes?” Harry prompted.  
  
“One of our members, Tatyana Kingston, is missing,” said Dennis in a rush. He turned away from Harry. “She left last night saying that she was going to a Muggle pub where we meet sometimes, and then she didn’t return, and the ones who were there to meet her said she hadn’t come, either. And I realized—I looked up some other dates, and—” Dennis licked his lips and turned back. “She’s been out of our headquarters on the nights of at least two Bard murders. And I heard the rumors that there’s been another one.”  
  
Harry looked carefully at Dennis’s sweaty forehead and trembling hands. Dennis seemed to realize they were trembling a second later, and locked them behind his back with a shaky smile.  
  
“We’ll look into it,” Harry said. He privately doubted there was much in it, but they did have to investigate every lead they came across.  
  
“Thank you,” said Dennis. “You can imagine how disastrous this would be for my organization, if she was seen as its face.”  
  
He turned away again and walked off towards an Apparating point. Harry leaned against the wards and watched him go.


	5. Slip-Through

“So  _that’s_ suspicious,” Ron said, after Harry had wound up the story of Dennis coming to see him and giving him Tatyana Kingston’s name.  
  
“Bloody suspicious,” Harry said, shifting so he could get more of the cushion under his knees. It had seemed ridiculous to him that he should have to be uncomfortable on a stone floor every time he wanted to firecall someone—and chats with Neville and Molly in particular could take a long time. So he had a cushion in front of the hearth now. “The only thing I can’t figure out is what Dennis wants. Is he trying to distract attention from himself? Or from someone else in the Muggleborn Legion? Or is it a distraction technique combined with real news about a missing woman who needs to be found?”  
  
Ron was silent for a moment, fingers rapping on the desktop. It made a pile of parchment tilt dangerously near the floor, and Ron had to break off whatever he was about to say to snatch the pile before it could fall. Harry looked up at the ceiling and whistled innocently.  
  
“Shut it, you,” Ron grumbled.  
  
“Then I can’t discuss anything with you,” said Harry, and blinked at him.  
  
Ron flipped him off. “You’re sure it’s a distraction technique,” he said.  
  
“What are the chances,” Harry said gently, “that Dennis would have noticed the pattern of Kingston’s disappearances coinciding with the Bard’s killings  _just now_? What are the chances that he’d feel the need to come to us when news of Lucius Malfoy’s death hasn’t even been officially released yet?”  
  
“So how did he find it out?” Ron jumped in.  
  
“Through someone in his organization who likes to brag?” Harry shrugged. “Listen, I know you and Dennis have fought together a time or two.” Dennis and Ron both belonged to an informal dueling organization that liked to run pairs of wizards opposite each other instead of just having single duelists fight each other all the time, and Dennis and Ron had been a pair. “I’m not saying he  _is_ the Bard. I’m just saying I don’t believe him any more than I would Bellatrix walking up to me fluttering her eyelashes and saying I was the love of her life.”  
  
Ron shivered and clawed at his shoulder. “Thanks  _so much_ for that disturbing image, mate.”  
  
Harry grinned at him. “I live to spread my disturbing images around and make sure other people know all about them, too.”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes at him. “So what do you want me to investigate now? Dennis? Or just report on how the investigation into Kingston’s disappearance goes?”  
  
“Just report,” said Harry, and shrugged. “If you can without compromising your integrity or silencing orders. But since I’m part of this case now and I can’t leave the house unless I take the Malfoys with me—”  
  
“You’re going to receive reports anyway,” said Ron, and began to grin. “You want me to, what? Add that little something extra to them I did on the Gillencrest case?”  
  
“That would be helpful,” said Harry. “After all, that little something extra helped us solve the case, didn’t it?”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes again. “Helped  _you_. I didn’t even realize how much vital information I was passing along to you at the time.”  
  
“But you did later. And you did it. That’s the important thing.” Harry shifted around on the cushion and sighed as he heard someone yell his name from upstairs. “I have things to take care of here. Keep me informed?”  
  
“Of course.” Ron flipped off a salute and then turned and left the office before Harry could yell at him for it, making continuing the firecall pointless. Harry still grumbled to himself as he shut down the Floo.  
  
“Potter!”  
  
That sounded like fear. Harry rolled to his feet and drew his wand, running straight for the stairs as he did so.  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t know how he was supposed to use a bathroom that had a  _portrait_ in it.  
  
“It’s not as though I care about what you look like, you know,” said the unpleasant old man in the portrait, sniffing a little. “I’m rather past that point of my existence.”  
  
“I don’t want you in here,” said Draco. “Point or no point.” He folded his arms and tried to stare down the portrait, while his mind worked furiously. Portraits could be gaps in the wards, couldn’t they? Draco knew that none of the pictured ancestors in his own manor would have betrayed their descendants to the Bard of Morning’s Hope, but he knew nothing about the Black ancestors, including this one.  
  
Even if they liked Mother, if they remembered her from her visits here as a child, the Black family had always been a little strange. What if they’d betrayed her and Draco for a lark, or under the sincere belief that they were doing good?  
  
“What’s the matter?” Potter came springing through the door, his cloak rippling behind him.  
  
Draco stared at him for a second. Potter had his wand out, his eyes narrowed as if he needed to shut out strong sunlight, and his body seemed to flow together into a collection of sleek, strong lines. He was every inch the Cool, Competent Auror.  
  
Draco swallowed, and a barely-noticed fear plaguing him died away. At least Potter was going to be  _able_ to track down the Bard of Morning’s Hope. Draco couldn’t watch the way he spun around, scanning the room for the threat, and doubt that.  
  
A second later, though, Potter slipped his wand back into its holster and shook his head at the portrait. “I didn’t realize that was a frame you could use, Phineas,” he said.  
  
Draco turned warily back to the man. “Phineas Nigellus?” he asked. “My mother told me a few tales about you.”  
  
“She left out all the best ones, I bet, or you would have shown me more respect,” said the portrait, and turned to talk to Potter before Draco could retort that it wasn’t as if Narcissa had told him what Phineas Nigellus  _looked_ like. “I only use this portrait frame when I sense strange magic in the house. I would never use it to spy on you, boy.”  
  
“Yes, well, I don’t want you to use it to spy on my guests, either,” said Potter, shaking his head. His hair was tangled and wind-worn, and he folded his arms and scowled at the portrait. “He’s my guest, all right? So is his mother. Go away.”  
  
“But I need to learn more about  _why_ ,” said Phineas, and Draco could see the gleam in his eyes as he leaned back against a faint line that might have been a bookshelf in the blurred painting. “If only to reassure those old gossips back at Hogwarts that you  _might_ be on the brink of a chance of having more company, not squatting up here at all hours of the night like a raven in a paperwork nest.”  
  
Potter flushed, but his gaze never wavered. “Protecting them on a case. Lucius Malfoy died this morning.” He gave a quick glance at Draco, and then averted his eyes as if he was afraid that he might intrude on Draco’s grief. “Anyway, Grimmauld Place is the safest place for them right now.”  
  
Phineas straightened up and looked from Potter to Draco. “What a waste,” he remarked at last, and turned and disappeared from the frame.  
  
A little relieved that Phineas didn’t seem interested in coming back, Draco turned to Potter. “What does  _that_ mean?”  
  
Potter shook his head. “Phineas was Headmaster of Hogwarts at one time. He gossips with all of them, including Dumbledore, and apparently there are wagers going on as to the time when I’m tired of living alone and start—I don’t even know. Hanging out with my fans, dating, spending time with someone other than Ron and Hermione, deciding that I believe my own press and consider myself a hero and a public toast.” He waved a disgusted hand. “ _Portraits_.”  
  
“And he thought—he thought  _I_ might be someone you would be interested in dating?” Draco only then knew how badly he’d been rattled by his father’s death, because he had picked up on that as the only noteworthy thing in Potter’s little monologue.  
  
“Yes,” said Potter. “If it bothers you, then I can give you another bathroom.”  
  
“It doesn’t  _bother_ me,” said Draco, and straightened up. He might be rattled, he might be unable to prevent the Bard’s attacks by himself, but he wasn’t going to be a coward about something he understood, in the middle of a warded and protected house, no less. “Go away. I’m just going to use the loo and take a shower now that there’s no spying portrait about.”  
  
“Of course,” Potter said, and turned and loped out of the bathroom.  
  
Draco exhaled an angry hiss as he started to take his clothes off. He didn’t know what he was angry at, but it felt good to have something to be angry  _about_ instead of just scared and shaken and wondering when the next blow would fall.  
  
Even if he had to admit that the stupid portrait probably deserved his anger more than Potter did.  
  
*  
  
“No sign of her.”  
  
Harry leaned back and nodded slowly. Auror Grimstone was the one who had delivered the report, not because he’d been deeply involved in the search for Kingston, but because he had already undertaken the investigation and handled sensitive information about the Bard. “And the Muggleborn Legion wouldn’t let you see the records that specified she was gone on the nights of two other Bard attacks, I suppose?”  
  
Grimstone’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Creevey claims there aren’t any records, that this just comes from observations and memories.”  
  
Harry snorted. They knew from the information they had gained on the smuggling case that the Muggleborn Legion kept  _extensive_ records of everything, and their agents were encouraged to write down all these reports and different sorts of recollections so they could use “the weapon of the written word” against their tormentors. “Right. Well. Thanks for the report.”  
  
Grimstone touched his pointed hat—he was one of the traditionalists among the Aurors who insisted on wearing one at all times—and the Floo died down again. Harry put one hand thoughtfully over his mouth and stared up at the ceiling.  
  
He liked Dennis Creevey for the Bard. He certainly did. He fit the specifics Harry had privately decided on: Muggleborn, had reason to think evil of people on Voldemort’s side who had survived the battle where his brother had died, and had the required fanatical determination, which he had demonstrated when he founded the Muggleborn Legion.  
  
On the other hand, Harry had been close to Dennis several times now, not just outside his wards today but when he visited the Muggleborn Legion to ask about cases and interviewed Dennis about his connections with the smuggling case and even when they had met casually before Harry became an Auror. Harry thought he was pretty good at picking up on someone’s magic. He couldn’t tell what spells someone was capable of casting, or even whether they had a specific ability like an Animagus form. But he could tell whether they were particularly focused, or determined, or powerful.  
  
Hermione’s magic was a quiet song singing away to itself, starred and dotted with sparkling bursts of notes that danced up and down the scale. Harry knew—because he knew her—that it meant she was good at figuring out new uses for common spells, and brewing potions she’d never completed before. Her magic had been one of the first focal points that helped him figure out what his impressions meant.  
  
Ron’s magic was a lazy river, most of the time. Ron had power, but not the focus Hermione did; he would surge to the rescue to defend friends or victims in need, or chase down criminals, but he wasn’t on high alert all the time. Several of the Aurors were somewhere along the same spectrum as Ron, although the more paranoid ones sounded more like grumbling waterfalls. Harry was a little sorry that he’d never got the chance to listen to Mad-Eye Moody. It would probably have been a raging torrent.  
  
Harry didn’t know what  _he_ sounded like, because you couldn’t listen to yourself, but he did know what a whole bunch of people sounded like. And he knew what magical theorists and geniuses sounded like—all the different kinds, from people like Hermione to Unspeakables, to spell creators and those who had made genuine breakthroughs.  
  
The Bard  _had_ to be one of those people. And Dennis didn’t sound like him. He sounded like a low, subdued song that became fervent only when he spoke of injustices against Muggleborns.  
  
Harry sighed and stood up. Maybe the Bard really was this Tatyana Kingston. Or, more likely, someone else in the group, someone who was valuable and Dennis wasn’t ready to see sacrificed.  
  
 _I’ll have to request a list of everyone in the Muggleborn Legion, and try to arrange to meet them, or at least eliminate the ones I have met,_ Harry thought, a little annoyed. He had thought he would be doing more of the thinking, with bodyguard work. But he—  
  
A scream rang from upstairs.  
  
This time, Harry didn’t bother running up the steps the way he had when Malfoy yelled for him earlier. He folded his arms and shut his eyes, and that silver lightning he had added to the wards, product of another inheritance he wanted no more than he’d wanted the Black fortune and property from Sirius, seized on him and whirled him to his destination.  
  
*  
  
Draco was yelling for his mother as he thumped around, trying to understand why his  _Lumos_ Charm wasn’t coming to life, why he couldn’t see in the thick darkness of the bedroom that shouldn’t be  _that_ dark, and feeling the gust of cold that traveled past his cheek.  
  
Then the charm sprang to life, and filled the bedroom with brilliant shadows, and Draco shook his head hard and faced his mother’s bed.  
  
There was nothing there now, but Narcissa was sitting up with something over her nose and mouth. Draco reached out and took it. It looked as though it was an ordinary handkerchief, but when Draco turned it over, it was starred with small spots of blood.  
  
“ _Damn_ it.”  
  
Draco blinked and turned his head. Potter was beside him, but Draco hadn’t heard him come in. Potter had his wand pointed at a corner that was opposite from Narcissa’s bed. He dropped his hand slowly and repeated the bleak words. “Damn it.”  
  
“What the hell happened?” Draco whispered. He would have liked to demand clarification instead of merely ask for it, but at the moment, he didn’t have it in him.  
  
“The Bard was here,” said Potter. “And it’s no comfort knowing I was right that he might stalk you if I can’t be here to bloody fucking  _prevent_ it.” He turned and came up to Narcissa. “Are you all right, Mrs. Malfoy?”  
  
“I will be,” said Narcissa, and bowed her head a little. “But you should take care of that handkerchief, and not use language like that in front of me again.” She reached up as if she was going to adjust the shawl across her shoulders, and stopped.  
  
“Where’s your shawl?” Draco demanded, glad he could use a normal tone of voice once in a while.   
  
“I do not know,” said Narcissa hollowly.  
  
“Here,” said Potter, and took the handkerchief from Draco. He turned it over and nodded. “Transfigured from the shawl,” he said, his voice clinical. “He planned to use it in the murder somehow, although I think he must have slipped up—otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to scream.”  
  
“Potter, do you  _mind_?” Draco snapped, seeing how pale his mother’s face was becoming. He stepped up to Narcissa and wrapped his arms around her, frowning severely at Potter. “No wonder they usually keep you at bodyguard work; you haven’t the slightest idea of how to behave around people who need comfort.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” said Potter, and shook his head. “I just—I need to keep this. It’s the first time we’ve ever had a clue as to what the Bard was planning to do.” He looked straight at Draco’s mother, and smiled as gently as Draco thought he could at that moment, while he was being the Big Bad Auror. “It’s the first time that someone has ever survived a Bard attack, in fact.”  
  
That made Draco’s mother tilt her head back, and Draco relaxed. Potter might be pants at traditional means of comforting, but maybe he had spoken with enough pure-bloods to know what to do when he had to. “All right, Potter. Then maybe you can tell me how the Bard got through the wards?”  
  
“That, I’m working on,” Potter replied, and turned around slowly as though looking for clues. “At the moment, I’m more interested in why he fled with his work uncompleted. We know at other times, the presence of someone sleeping in the same room wasn’t a deterrent to him.”  
  
Draco looked with Potter’s eyes, trying to think like an Auror. But the only things in the room were the ones that Potter had kept here all along or Transfigured for them, and the small keepsakes they had brought with them from the Manor, the photographs of his father and their small toiletries and clothes. Draco knew that none of them had ever been owned by a Muggleborn, and he was at a loss as to how they could have been used in the sympathetic magic Potter said had got past the Manor’s wards.  
  
“Have you had a Muggleborn visit your house recently?” he asked. “They could have left something here.”  
  
Potter stiffened a little. “Dennis Creevey did come by today,” he whispered. “But he didn’t try to get through the wards. He wanted to tell me about a missing Muggleborn woman he claims is the Bard.”  
  
“Then go check the bloody wards,” Draco snapped, and for once, Potter did as he was told, disappearing down the stairs again.  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes in thought. Perhaps someone who hadn’t got through the wards personally couldn’t have influenced them in the way the Bard would have to, but Draco had thought of someone else.  
  
Potter’s friend Granger had been at the Battle of Hogwarts. She’d lost friends there. She would surely visit Potter’s house all the time.  
  
Draco had someone to watch for. 


	6. Unwanted Answers

“So Ron tells me that you have a problem,” said Hermione, and swept her cloak behind her, sitting down with a flourish in the largest chair at the table.  
  
Harry grinned and leaned back with his legs crossed, one foot on the table, because he enjoyed what happened when he did that. He received a glare harsh enough to nearly roast the wood, and certainly his leg. He blinked tamely at Hermione and dropped his foot to the floor, looking up at her from beneath his eyelashes.  
  
“I  _wish_ you wouldn’t do that,” said Hermione, with a shake of her head that seemed to accuse herself of indulging him as much as it accused Harry of indulging in horrid behavior. “It’s disgusting to have a shoe up on the table.” She brightened. “Did you know how many germs there are on the bottoms of shoes? And then you track them through all the mud and put them on the table, and, combined with the loose magic you have trailing around you—”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and raised one hand. “All right, Hermione, that’ll do.”  
  
“But I hadn’t even got to the connection with dragonpox yet,” Hermione muttered, eyes glinting, and peered at him around her hand the way Harry had around his shoe.  
  
Harry had to laugh, because the games he and Hermione played with each other were  _fun_ , now that they were no longer kids in school and taking either Voldemort or their academic reputation deathly seriously. Hermione was the one who had discovered a connection between several magical diseases and the “loose magic” that many wizards and witches trailed around after them, collecting Muggle germs and transforming them. For nearly a month after that first discovery, she had admonished Harry and Ron all the time to finish their casting movements  _neatly_ instead of just letting them trail off into big sloppy gestures, and speak their incantations clearly instead of muttering them. Otherwise, the magic would linger around a wizard’s body and make them more likely to get sick.  
  
Now, she was past that stage, and Harry enjoyed teasing her about it. And being teased back.  
  
“Not a huge problem,” Harry said, and sipped from his tea again before he put his mug down on the table in front of him. “But the Bard did come through the wards last night, and tried to attack Narcissa Malfoy.”  
  
Hermione opened her mouth, then sat up straight. “You said  _tried_.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Well, I suppose I should say that the attack  _did_ happen, but she survived, and the Bard faltered for some unknown reason.” He bent down beside him and picked up the blood-splattered Transfigured shawl. “I wondered if you could take a look at this and tell me about any spells lingering on it.”  
  
Hermione drew her wand and cast a spell that surrounded the shawl with a silvery orb of power. Hermione exclaimed softly, and then sank into a wide-eyed trance, gaze locked on the shawl and never deviating.  
  
Harry smiled. Hermione had been invited to join the Unspeakables, but she had ended up in a unique position, floating between them, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and the Ministry legal departments. She did plenty of legal work, but also spell creation, theory research, and investigation of artifacts deemed Light enough to leave the protective custody of the Department of Mysteries.  
  
And right now, Harry trusted her more than any other to tell him about what evidence the Bard might have left behind.  
  
“There is strength here,” Hermione whispered. “Loose magic. It’s just unlike any kind of magic I’ve seen before.”  
  
Harry shook his head, both amused and dismayed. At least that gave them a  _good_ reason none of them had been able to capture the Bard before, but it didn’t exactly promise reassurance about whether they would be able to do so in the future. “What’s different about it?”  
  
Hermione shot him an uncertain glance. “It’s going to be hard to explain to someone whose magical theory background isn’t up to par.”  
  
Harry propped his chin on his hand and gave her a dangerous smile. “Try me.”  
  
“All right,” said Hermione, and her eyes were challenging right back. “The magic here is a lot looser than normal. Whoever cast this spell was trying to turn the shawl not just into a handkerchief, but also a murder weapon. That’s why there’s blood. They were doing a Transfiguration that wasn’t complete yet. This wasn’t suffocation. I think they were trying to turn Mrs. Malfoy herself into blood.”  
  
Harry shuddered. That was how one of the Bard’s earlier victims had died, transformed into blood that had melted into the bed. At least that confirmed it  _was_  more likely to be the Bard, and not some other kind of danger. “But they’re a sloppy caster?”  
  
“They have to be, if the magic is that loose,” said Hermione and shook her head. “Except with Transfiguration. Transfiguration is tighter. The weaves are bound around the body or object, and rotate it, and make—”  
  
Harry let a few sentences wash over him. Then he said, “Is the looseness the only unusual thing?”  
  
“No,” said Hermione, and she was  _really_ frowning now. “It feels like the Bard’s been dabbling in ice magic. There’s a kind of signature, here, that you only get with that magic.” She laid her palm on the side of the Transfigured shawl. “But on the other hand, that magic is fleeting except in arctic environments, because ice does melt. Most of the time, someone could cast a powerful ice spell and then move on to casting something else weaker, and that other spell would completely obscure the ice signature.” She looked hesitantly at Harry.  
  
Harry sat up. “Lucius Malfoy died because he was Transfigured into an ice statue that melted. And the Bard’s signature on the wall was in ice.”  
  
“That could have been enough, maybe,” Hermione hedged. “But that would depend on the person not casting any magic since then, and surely they’d have to use magic to get through your wards and Transfigure the shawl…”  
  
“You have an idea,” said Harry, narrowing his eyes at her. “Spit it out.”  
  
“It’s not something that I’m trying to keep from you because I think you wouldn’t react well,” said Hermione.   
  
Harry nodded, appeased. He and Hermione had gone through a period like that immediately after Hermione had been offered the Unspeakable job, and Harry had finally had to make it clear that he would rather know the truth even if it was uncomfortable or seemingly immoral. He trusted Hermione. He knew she wouldn’t do anything without excellent reasons. He had to know the reasons if he wanted to argue with her, or agree.  
  
“I think it’s possible this is a magical, animated curse, instead of a person,” said Hermione, and leaned towards him when Harry opened his mouth. Since he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say, Harry relaxed and listened. “It would explain a lot of things. The curse isn’t affected by wards because the wards are meant to keep  _people_  out, or at least magical creatures. It strikes viciously and without mercy because it can’t feel any.”  
  
“But it would still depend on someone casting the curse,” Harry said. He remembered, vaguely, learning about curses that had got detached from an object and wandered around attacking people in his first year of Auror training, but they always struck randomly or hit anyone who came into a certain place. “This is too focused. It only strikes Death Eaters and other people on Voldemort’s side who were at the Battle of Hogwarts.”  
  
“I know,” said Hermione. “But I’m saying that that person who cast it isn’t the one who’s kept it going now. Maybe that person is in St. Mungo’s, catatonic. Maybe they were wounded in the battle and later died of their wounds. Or maybe it’s someone who made it happen through accidental magic and doesn’t even remember now what they wished for.”  
  
Harry considered that, frowning. It was true that accidental magic could accomplish some amazing things. He knew, now, how rare it was to Apparate when a magical child was still as young as he’d been when he did it, and blowing up his aunt was something he didn’t think he could do  _now_. But something still rang wrong about the theory to him.  
  
“The deaths are so deliberate,” he said. “So varied. I’d find it easier to believe it was a curse if all the deaths were the same.”  
  
“Well, let me take the shawl with me and I might be able to answer more of your questions,” Hermione said, reaching out and gathering it up. “At least, there are artifacts in the Department that can read magical signatures more precisely than I can. Maybe they’ll be able to sense something on it besides the ice magic.”  
  
“All right,” said Harry, and sat back and watched Hermione stand with a sigh. “Working too hard?”  
  
“It was a long night,” Hermione admitted. “One of those things you’re not supposed to know about got out of its cage.”  
  
“Then go home and rest first,” said Harry.  
  
Hermione eyed him. “It’s not that urgent even though you had an attack here last night?”  
  
“I want you to be rested so you’re not making mistakes,” Harry said, standing up and coming around the table to hug her. “That’s the urgent thing right now.”  
  
*  
  
 _There’s no way that Potter will listen to me about my suspicions, not when he trusts her that disgustingly much._  
  
Draco could feel his hands digging into the wall behind him, but that still hurt less than the smile he saw on Granger’s face as she stepped away from Potter and made some light joke, heading towards the door. Potter laughed and waved after her, and stood there smiling until the door shut. Then he began moving around the table, gathering up the remains of his breakfast. And hers.  
  
 _Did he not want me to know she was here?_ Draco put up his back and advanced slowly down the staircase. He would act ignorant if he had to, but at the moment, keeping Potter from suspecting the secrets  _Draco_ held was even more urgent.  
  
“Good morning, Malfoy,” Potter said when Draco’s foot was an inch from the bottom of the last step.  
  
Draco froze for a second, wondering if Potter had known he was there all along, or had only heard him when he came down the last few creaky stairs. But as long as Draco didn’t have to refer directly to Granger, he wouldn’t. “Good morning,” he said stiffly, and walked around the kitchen table to pick up a cup for himself. He would cast some subtle detection spells on it, to make sure that Granger hadn’t left poison behind. “I thought you were going to stay in the room with us during the night?”  
  
“I did,” said Potter, and gave him a baffled look. “Did you not sense me?”  
  
“I mean you weren’t there when I woke up this morning,” said Draco, wondering how Potter had already managed to wrongfoot him. “And if the Bard had attacked again, you wouldn’t have been there to save us.”  
  
Potter gave him a thin smile. “I stayed awake the rest of the night, with a spell called the Constant Vigilance Curse.” He went on before Draco could ask why he would cast a curse on himself. “And I added something else to the wards.”  
  
“Like the other thing you added that stood us in such good stead?” Draco sneered.  
  
Potter only blinked gravely at him. “This particular addition will warn me every time something crosses the wards.”  
  
Draco frowned in thought. “Including—”  
  
“Anything alive,” said Potter. “Including birds and insects. It’s good that the Constant Vigilance Curse won’t let me sleep anyway.” He began to run hot water into the cups in the sink, keeping his back turned to Draco as if he didn’t want to meet his eyes and see the suspicion of Granger there.  
  
 _But I haven’t said anything about it yet, so he can’t know I feel it. Unless he suspects Granger himself._ Draco was also confident that Potter couldn’t have read anything accidentally out of his head, either. Potter had never been  _that_ good with Legilimency, from what Professor Snape had told Draco.  
  
“Why do you call a spell that you’re using to defend us a curse?” Draco cast a small detection spell on the sausages that waited under a smoldering Warming Charm. The house-elf had probably made them, but still.  
  
“Because when it’s cast on someone without Auror training, they start and leap at every sound,” said Potter easily. “It won’t let them sleep. It can drive them mad, or at least to hallucinations.” He turned around from the sink and smiled at Draco. “When someone with Auror training uses it, it works more like a charm that sharpens their senses, and it simply means that they won’t fall asleep on the job.”  
  
 _As long as they stay in the same room as the job,_ Draco thought, and decided that he might as well approach one problem directly. “If the Bard doesn’t cross the wards, though, what good will the spell do?”  
  
“Well, now,” Potter said, and nodded his head at Draco’s breakfast. “If you want to finish eating and then wake your mother and have her come with us, there are some things I want to test. And show you.”  
  
Draco nearly choked, he inhaled the food so fast.   
  
*  
  
“I wish to know what you will show us,” said Narcissa, in that pale silvery voice Harry was already growing used to from her.  
  
“Yeah, I should,” Harry said, and turned his hand palm upwards. When he thought about it, the silvery fire flickered there. He saw Malfoy move away from it out of the corner of his eye. Harry shrugged at him. “It’s not like I asked for or wanted this kind of magic, really.”  
  
“Are you ever going to tell us what it  _is_?” Malfoy’s voice was a little shrill, and he kept his eyes locked on Harry’s hand.  
  
“It’s something I put up around the wards in hope that it would help keep the Bard away,” Harry said, and frowned at the wards again. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t been disturbed at all. That meant he would have to look at the sympathetic magic theory and how the Bard could have sneaked something inside his house.  
  
 _It had to have come with the Malfoys._  
  
Harry kept his face neutral, though, because while he thought he might persuade them to part with their clothes and so on, he didn’t know how he would persuade them to get rid of the keepsakes of Lucius, and said, “Watch.”  
  
The silvery fire bubbled up when he called on it, ringing the wards with a glistening, flickering radiance. Harry separated his hands and clenched them, and the fire dived down and wove in and out of the wards. Malfoy was watching with an open mouth. Narcissa looked as unimpressed as she always did. Harry had to admit that both reactions gave him a faint satisfaction.  
  
He finally called the silver fire back into him, grimacing at the slightly unpleasant taste on his lips as it branded its way into his mouth, and said, “This is a power that’s based on—well, on protection of Slytherins. I didn’t think it would let anything cross the wards that wanted to harm one. So we’re left with the chance that the Bard didn’t cross the wards. But I want you to help me look at them and make sure of that.”  
  
“What  _is_ it?” Malfoy whispered. “How did you get something intended for the protection of Slytherins?”  
  
Harry sighed. “When Snape died, I was there. He gave me some memories I had to have, memories that let me defeat Voldemort.” Malfoy forgot to flinch at the name, so intently was he watching Harry. “I watched the memories, and I thought that was it. But I’d touched the memories in their raw form, either when they came out of Snape or when I put them into the Pensieve, I don’t know which one. So I found myself with the ability to use this magic, sometimes. Only when it concerns the protection of Slytherins, really, or if I’m in absolute peril and something’s taken my wand away.”  
  
“I’ve never heard of that,” Malfoy said, and acted as if he was trying to stare a hole through Harry.  
  
Harry shrugged. “Neither had the Healers at St. Mungo’s. And it was a long time before I understood what I had. The way I got to your room so fast last night? This.” He held up one hand, and there was a sullen spark of silver fire for a moment before it died. “But it only functioned that way because I was trying to protect you.”  
  
“Or if you were in danger of dying,” Malfoy said. “Why? What kind of fondness did Snape hold for you, that his memories would protect you that way?”  
  
Harry stared at Malfoy in silence, and said nothing. That had been Snape’s secret, his vow and his fondness for Lily. He’d had to give it to Harry, but Harry could at least ensure that it went no further.  
  
After a moment, Malfoy seemed to realize he wouldn’t get anything else out of Harry. He turned a stiff, offended little shoulder and looked around at the wards. “You want to know how to strengthen them?”  
  
“I want you to recognize places in them that I might not see, thanks to my lack of Black blood,” said Harry, and nodded to Narcissa. “And if there’s anything else you can tell me, useful tricks, then of course you can add those as well.”  
  
Narcissa stood a little taller, slipping a different shawl down from her shoulders. “I can certainly do that.”  
  
Harry relaxed. He hoped that this collaboration would help to make them feel they were doing something useful as well as strengthen the wards.  
  
And, when they were done with it, maybe they would feel comfortable enough around him to listen when Harry asked them to send those little keepsakes of Lucius back to the Manor, just in case they were tainted.


	7. Repairing Holes

The morning had been—tolerable, Draco had to allow. Potter had escorted them around his wards, letting his mother recognize blood protections and point out things that could be fixed. He had smiled and nodded at Draco, instead of getting upset at him, when Draco questioned the previous strength of his wards.  
  
“Yes, they really weren’t enough,” he’d agreed, taking a step back and critically surveying the shimmering stack of lines around the house. “I thought the addition of the silver fire would be enough, but with the Bard inside the wards…” He shrugged.  
  
“Then I don’t understand,” said Draco, and kept his voice as casual as he could, because his mother was looking sternly at him and wouldn’t forgive him if Draco messed this up. “Why are you bothering to strengthen the wards if the Bard can just get inside them?”  
  
Potter nodded to him again. “I’m planning something that I hope will shove the Bard back outside the wards and force him to respect them.”  
  
Draco licked his lips. “What is that?” Last night, he had been almost hopeless. He didn’t know why he had awakened and managed to save his mother, but he couldn’t attribute it to any slip-up on the Bard’s part when he  _didn’t_ know.   
  
“We need to make some tests,” said Potter, and sighed and set his shoulders. “Come on, let’s talk about this back inside the wards. There might be spies for the Bard that could listen in.” He hesitated, then added, “He’s either part of the Muggleborn Legion, or has spies inside their walls, I’m certain.”  
  
Draco blinked and followed him. “How do you know  _that_?” he demanded, the instant they were inside.  
  
“Don’t be impatient, Draco darling,” his mother murmured as she took a seat on the other side of the table and looked at Potter critically. The house-elf popped up and put a cup of tea in front of her. Narcissa didn’t acknowledge the service, and the elf bowed in what looked like ecstasy and vanished again. “I think Auror Potter is just about to explain.”  
  
“Yes.” Potter nodded at her and looked at both of them until Draco sat down with a resigned sigh. Then Potter  _did_ get on with the explanation. “A member of the Muggleborn Legion came to visit me yesterday, claiming that one of his people had vanished and that she must be the one responsible for the Bard attacks. The timing is beyond suspicious.”  
  
“But the Aurors believed his story, of course,” Draco said, because that was how his luck would run.  
  
Potter speared him with a single glance. “They believed it enough to look for this Tatyana Kingston he claimed had disappeared. But there’s no trace of her, and so we’re sure that she’s a distraction at worst, a Bard ally but not the Bard herself at best.”  
  
Draco looked his mother and mouthed the name “Tatyana Kingston,” but she only shook her head. Draco hadn’t expected her to have familiarity with a Muggleborn name if he didn’t himself, but it was still a disappointment.  
  
“What do you think you can do to prevent a Bard attack?” he asked, and turned back to Potter.  
  
Potter studied them for a second, and Draco restrained his mouth. He didn’t think Potter was being deliberately provocative. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts, and Merlin  _knew_ that would be a long process, Draco thought.  
  
His mother gave him a light frown, as if sensing the tendency of his thoughts. Draco shrugged at her, unapologetic. He had to put up with Potter somehow, and that meant teasing in his mind if he couldn’t do it aloud.  
  
“It’s beyond unusual that the Bard didn’t finish the attack,” Potter began. “It’s at least a hopeful sign that, once we moved you here, he couldn’t attack as well.” He hesitated again, then said, “The only thing that really changed beyond your arrival was the arrival of your keepsakes.”  
  
It took Draco a moment to understand what he meant, and in the meantime, his mother had already understood. She stood up with a hiss. “How  _dare_ you say that I should destroy the mementos of my husband,” she said, and then she choked and sat back down, drawing one corner of her new shawl up to wipe her eyes.  
  
“No,” said Potter quietly. “I’m not saying that. I want you to send the photographs and so on back to the Manor.” He hesitated, then added, “I think the Bard would be more likely to enter through an image of his victim than through your clothes or—or your toothbrushes, but I would send those back as well.”  
  
“So he can go into our house and be waiting for us when we go back?” Draco asked viciously. “Oh, yes, Potter, marvelous plan.”  
  
“ _Listen_.” Potter spun back around to face him, and Draco had to admit a certain admirable quality about him when his face was ignited like this. “We already know the Bard has access to the Manor. For whatever reason, his attack was different here, and your mum survived. If we can experiment a little, then maybe we can finally trap him, or at least make sure that he can’t hurt you while you’re here.”  
  
Draco frowned. He had to admit that that suggestion had merit, which was all the more reason for disliking it. “What kind of experiments are you talking about?”  
  
“I’m going to add wards of silver fire in the rooms themselves,” said Potter, and darted a glance at Draco’s mother. “With your permission, I’d like to keep one image of Lucius and ward it. To see what happens if the Bard tries to make another entrance.”  
  
“You will not destroy it,” said his mother, and she didn’t rise, but the white-knuckled grip of her hands on the arms of her chair were enough warning of what would happen to Potter if he did, Draco thought.  
  
“Of course not.” Potter stared at her as though she was the one suggesting mad theories of impossible magic, not him.  
  
Narcissa struggled for a second. Then she inclined her head. “I have a photograph that you can ward.”  
  
“Yes,” said Draco quietly. “I think it’s a good idea.”   
  
Potter shot him a quick look. Draco held his eyes and said nothing. It was true that he wanted to pick at Potter; that his father had only died yesterday; that he didn’t think Potter was taking this seriously enough, when the Bard had also attacked them in the house that was supposed to be their best sanctuary.  
  
But he appreciated Potter was doing all he could. Even the best Auror in the business couldn’t do much to arrest someone who could apparently appear and disappear through keepsakes, and play some sort of game with wards. Draco lowered his head and let out a long, slow, shaking breath.  
  
He could acknowledge that. He didn’t have to like it.  
  
*  
  
Harry stepped back and slowly nodded. The photograph of Lucius, the only one not sent back to the Manor, was covered with crawling networks of silver fire now. Snape’s legacy to him hummed and crackled more vigilantly than ever. Harry sometimes thought, uneasily, that a bit of Snape’s memories lingered in it, and approved when Harry was trying something new and innovative to protect Slytherins.   
  
Or perhaps it only picked up on his own urgency, which was certainly deep enough.  
  
Harry curled his fingers into his palm and hissed a little. It seemed impossible that the Bard could have come through a photograph in the first place. And it didn’t answer the other questions Harry had about the Bard’s other attacks. There had been kill sites without images of the victim in them, and others that had only portraits. A few of the Death Eaters had died outside, or in temporary but heavily warded safehouses. How in the world could the Bard have a link to every  _one_ of those places? It was one of the many mysteries to how the Bard operated.  
  
 _And a question I won’t solve right now,_ Harry thought, as he turned around and found Malfoy standing in the doorway of the spare room behind him. Malfoy nodded to him with the distant expression on his face that Harry knew meant he was going to make trouble.  
  
“We will need new clothes to replace the ones we are sending back to the Manor,” said Malfoy, and raised his head haughtily when Harry looked at him, as if thinking Harry would dispute that. “Even the ones that we’re wearing now, since we also brought them, and the ones we wore yesterday, since both of us were in the room where my father died.” For a moment, his voice broke, and he looked away.  
  
Harry would have been content to remain in silence for a moment, to let Malfoy take his time to recover his poise, but Malfoy had it back as if he had never lost it. He plucked at the shirt he wore. “Unless you want us both naked, of course,” he added.  
  
Harry’s breath caught a little as he thought about Malfoy naked. Narcissa wasn’t in his mind at all; he just blinked at Malfoy and  _thought_ , and there was a glow to the image that he hadn’t seen in a while.  
  
Then Malfoy turned and glared at him again, and ruined the glow. No, Harry was being an idiot. Malfoy would never—he would be insulted if he knew the barest glimpse of what Harry was thinking. Harry nodded. “Then I’ll summon Grimstone and Adbar. They’ll accompany me as we take you to Diagon Alley.”  
  
Malfoy sneered. “You think that all the clothes shops we want to patronize are in Diagon Alley?”  
  
“Well, where are they, then?” Harry asked, thinking there must be some secret hidden wizarding village that was all shops and swaggering pure-bloods.  
  
“In Knockturn Alley.”  
  
Harry froze for the briefest second. Then he shook his head. “No, Malfoy. Are you insane? The Bard must have allies—he has to, to manage some of the devices that probably let him get in—and they’re probably  _all over_  Knockturn Alley.”  
  
“You don’t know that.” Malfoy was smiling, but in a way that made his eyes gleam like steel instead of simply shining. “After all, I know the Lestranges died far away from all centers of civilization.” He looked straight at Harry. “We need clothes. That’s not under dispute. And the shops of Diagon Alley do not have what we require. That is also not in dispute.”  
  
“Yes, it bloody is!” Harry crowded a little closer. Malfoy only stood his ground and didn’t retreat, which Harry had to admit was unexpected—and bloody inconvenient. “Can’t you just shop at Madam Malkin’s?”  
  
He sounded a little desperate, and from the small, satisfied curve of Malfoy’s smile, he knew it. “No. She doesn’t have our measurements. We would have to spend hours, perhaps a full day, out in order to have the clothes made. And have you forgotten that there are perhaps as many dangers in Diagon Alley as in Knockturn? There are people there sympathetic to the Bard. In fact, they may be more plentiful in the ‘Lighter’ areas than in the Darker ones.”  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead and the headache forming behind his scar. Malfoy laughed. “Come on, Potter. You knew that we would need clothes.”  
  
“Yes, but I thought that you would go to  _normal_ shops,” Harry muttered, his mind racing. He couldn’t take an Auror escort along into Knockturn Alley. The place survived based on treaties with the Ministry that Harry didn’t know about and wanted to destroy, but he didn’t have the power to do that. And right now, the survival of the Malfoys was what he had to consider, not why the Ministry put up with all that corruption a few miles from its doorstep.  
  
No, an Auror escort would signal the end of the truce for some people, and would certainly draw fire. But how could he keep the Malfoys safe in the middle of a swarming crowd of Dark wizards, warlocks, hags, and black apothecaries?  
  
A second later, Harry started to grin in spite of himself. The same way he had kept them safe, or tried, from an enemy that was deadlier than anything he had ever faced. He would need a disguise, but in the middle of Knockturn Alley, that was a given. Harry Potter wouldn’t be able to get more than a step without someone casting a curse at him.  
  
Harry knew what disguise he would use, too.  
  
“You’ve seen sense?” Malfoy sounded somewhere between delighted and disgruntled.  
  
Harry turned and gave him a sweet smile. “You could say that. For the moment, the biggest problem will be making sure that you have enough Galleons to look like you belong with  _me,_ instead of the other way around.”  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to sneer, but he didn’t, because that would mean Potter had too much attention from him.   
  
Of course, he also wanted to gape, because the figure who had met him and his mother at the bottom of the stairs in the drawing room was very different from the one that Draco had last seen ducking into the bathroom. But not different in an  _impressive_ way, Draco reassured himself hastily. In fact, he was fighting to hold in laughter, not a gasp.  
  
Really.  
  
Potter had somehow become almost a foot taller, and he wore a tall hat that was pointed in a severe way. Draco had only seen the equal on McGonagall. He also wore a long black cloak that draped over his shoulders and entirely hid whatever apparatus he was using to achieve the extra height. His hair had gone silver and thin, and his eyes were blue and fixed straight ahead. He nodded to Draco and Narcissa without looking at them and moved towards the door. Draco wondered if it would be hard for him to turn his head, and suspected it would.  
  
Which, of course, made Draco wonder why in the world he had adopted this disguise, when it would only lead to someone slaughtering him when they came up and he couldn’t spin around to hold his wand. Or, more to the point, it would lead to someone slaughtering Draco and Narcissa.  
  
“This is the best disguise you could imagine?” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth as they stepped into the garden.  
  
Potter’s eyes turned sideways and gave him a steady, aloof stare. “This disguise of mine has a reputation in Knockturn Alley,” he said, and his voice was a little high-pitched and had a different accent. Draco blinked, not able to lie to himself now about being impressed. “As someone who is bad to cross.”  
  
Draco considered that, then nodded. “I never meant to go without glamours, you know,” he reminded Potter. “Only in the shop will Mother and I have to appear as ourselves, because Madam Royal doesn’t see anyone with glamours on.” It was caution and good sense in a place like Knockturn, but also practical, when it came to her business, Draco knew. She couldn’t take accurate measurements or choose good colors if she couldn’t see someone’s real face or height.  
  
“Then put them on,” said Potter, and his eyes rolled back to staring into the distance.  
  
Bristling a little, Draco did. He had grown practiced at appearing as a nameless Muggleborn during the war when the Dark Lord had sometimes sent him on “scouting” missions—useless in reality—into Muggle areas. His spell combined features of several Muggleborn students he had known at Hogwarts: that one’s weak chin, this one’s brown bristles. He knew the spell by heart, still.  
  
His mother had done much the same thing when Draco turned to look at her, above all hiding her distinctive blond hair and delicately Black features. She looked like a Muggle matron with an elevated nose and upper lip.  
  
“Good,” said Potter, although Draco didn’t know exactly how he had swiveled his eyes to see their new appearances. “Now, follow close behind me. Leonis Klein has followers, not companions.”  
  
And he strode away. Draco listened hard this time, and was sure that he heard a creaking. He shook his head. That was riskier than if Potter had used illusions to achieve his new height. Someone would probably notice.  
  
On the other hand…  
  
Draco had to smile a little. Who would care enough to refer to it openly in Knockturn Alley, that center of illusion, deception, and supposedly miraculous cures? Of course Potter’s disguise would only work there, and not in an open area like Diagon Alley, where, especially since the war, more people were wont to comment on unusual things in case they were signs of a new Dark wizard attack.   
  
Yes, Potter had chosen his disguise well. And for it to have an established reputation and name, he had been in Knockturn Alley more than once. It wasn’t just size that would keep someone safe there, either. Potter had contacts. Influence.  
  
Draco followed him obediently, his eyes on Potter’s back. The black cloak flapped and swayed arrogantly.  
  
Potter would never be Draco’s favorite person, but he thought he could get to like this new version.


	8. Expedition to Knockturn Alley

Knockturn Alley looked exactly the same as it always did.  
  
After a frozen moment, Draco could shake his head and tell himself that of course it did. Even if people here would consider Lucius Malfoy’s death news worth paying attention to, it had been years since Lucius had had any business interests in the alley. And Draco had kept away from investing in businesses here as well, on his father’s advice. He had told Draco that Aurors were looking eagerly into all sorts of things the Malfoy family did right now, and even businesses that plenty of “Light” wizards earned profits from would be considered grounds for arrest.  
  
But in the future, when people’s memories, never long, had begun to fade, then…  
  
Draco choked abruptly. That sudden thought had hit him like a body blow, that his father was never going to get anything done in the future.  
  
Narcissa reached out and gripped his hand without saying anything. Draco kept his gaze fixed ahead. Part of was that was for the same reason he wouldn’t come into Knockturn Alley wearing his own face. Never show weakness in the domain of Dark wizards, no matter what happened.  
  
But the other was that he didn’t want to see her wearing her fake face right now. He wanted to imagine that she looked like herself, and imagine his father the way he had looked when alive, too, not as he had looked when melting into the bed.  
  
 _We are going to find the person who did that to him._  
  
And maybe Potter’s resolution to help would bear fruit. Draco nodded and decided to think, for the moment, that it would. He straightened up and looked ahead and kept walking, dropping his mother’s hand as soon as he could. That was another sign of weakness. There were warlocks, hags, and wizards here who would strike at them for sheer spite if they saw that, on the idle thought that one of them losing the other would hurt.  
  
But they were going to persevere through this, and they were going to trap the Bard, or at least stop him from entering the house. Potter’s wards were going to work.  
  
They had to.  
  
*  
  
The shop Malfoy and Narcissa apparently patronized was a small thing, so small that Harry had to stoop to get in the door. He wondered why this dim place had appealed to people who had enough money to get anything they wanted. How they had discovered it, why they wanted to continue to come here, and several other things.  
  
But once he was inside and had managed to lift his stooped head, he didn’t wonder any longer.  
  
The inside of the shop remained dim even when Harry cast a subtle spell that would let him see through magical shadows and darkness in case they were concealing traps, but it was the sort of warm, comfortable dimness that reminded Harry of some of the muted red and gold of the Gryffindor common room. There were two fireplaces, one on either side of the shop, which sloped back and around much further than Harry had thought it did. It looked as if the back of the shop might run up almost to the border that Knockturn Alley shared with Diagon.  
  
“Ah. Mr. Leonis Klein?”  
  
Harry knew he had never been here before, but his disguise had a reputation. He managed a rattling bow to the dark-haired woman with brown skin and calm dark eyes who had come out from behind a low curtain of blue cloth. “Yes. I am here for my companions, however, and not for myself.” And he took a stiff step to the side, carefully manipulating the contraption of bone and iron that disguised his height, and waited for the Malfoys to remove their glamours.  
  
They were already gone, he realized a second later. Harry concealed a sigh. He would just have to hope they hadn’t actually taken them off in the street.  
  
Madam Royal, if that was her, didn’t appear surprised to see their pale faces appearing. She only nodded and said, “Then you will want mourning robes?”  
  
Malfoy’s face was pink when Harry glanced at him, and Harry didn’t think it was only strange shadows cast by the appearance of the fire. “Yes,” he said in a clipped tone. “And cloaks, undergarments, shirts, trousers, plain robes, and socks.” He glanced at his mother.  
  
“A gown,” said Narcissa. “Rather than trousers. But the other things my son mentioned, as well.” She looked completely calm. Harry wondered how much that was feigned, and how much she had learned about such feigning when Voldemort was in the Manor.  _Probably a lot_ , he thought, and felt a squeeze of pity at his heart.  
  
“Then you will spend most of the day here,” said Madam Royal, and turned to Harry. “I can fit you as well, Mr. Klein.”  
  
“I will wait,” said Harry, and leaned against the wall. That took some of the weight off his contraption and feet and let him rest his back.  
  
Royal only paused as though she would argue, and then nodded and said, “Ah,” without blinking. She led Malfoy and his mum into the back of the shop, and let the curtain fall shut behind them.  
  
Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. On the one hand, he didn’t like letting the people he was guarding out of his sight. On the other, he had no particular desire to see them naked or half-naked, either. At least the contraption he wore had its own advantages to fighting if they were attacked here.  
  
He turned his gaze back to a point halfway between the curtain and the street, and waited.  
  
*  
  
“You would look charmingly in this robe.”  
  
Madam Royal never ordered someone else, Draco thought as he took the grey-blue robe from her. She only made pronouncements and observations, and it was up to someone else to obey them or not. She would sell them unflattering robes, if they wanted them, without turning a hair. And then somehow contrive to spread rumors that would reach all her regular customers and let them know that it wasn’t  _her_ bad taste that had led to people parading around like that.  
  
Right now, he was looking for a mourning robe. And Draco wasn’t even sure when the funeral was, because the Aurors were still swarming over the Manor and the bed where his father had died, from what Potter said. No telling when they would be done.  
  
 _Don’t think about it right now,_ Draco ordered himself, and confined his thoughts to what he could see from his reflection in the mirror. He turned his head back and forth slowly, admiring what he  _did_ see there. His hair was perfect, certainly, and the robes made his skin look pale but with a pearly glow beneath it, instead of the washed-out color Draco had been afraid he would see.  
  
Draco nodded slowly, and turned back to face Madam Royal with his mouth open. Right now, she was debating with his mother over a robe by doing nothing more than turning the silky thing back and forth in front of Narcissa and gravely, silently challenging her to refuse it. From the way his mother’s eyes and mouth set, Draco knew she  _thought_ she should, but would probably weaken easily enough.  
  
Then Draco felt a cold wind on his cheek, and purely on instinct he snapped his head to the side and dropped to the ground.   
  
The wind skated past him, and Draco leaped up in time to see the mirror crack and splinter. There was a growth of crystal on it, as thought someone had flung a web of crystal that would stick there.  
  
Something that didn’t quite have a form, that felt like a wind, leaped off the center of that crystal and made its way straight at Draco.  
  
And then Potter was there, leaping in with an enormous bound of his disguised legs, planting himself in between Draco and the invisible force, and raising a shield of more of that fire Draco had seen him add to the wards. This time, the fire drew itself in and rolled around and clung to the unseen thing, covering it like the crystal covered the center of the mirror, and dragged it to the ground. The sounds of a furious struggle, full of snarls and growls, came from the center of the fire. Draco stared, shaken, and Potter turned around and gathered him close with one arm, calling out a spell Draco didn’t know.  
  
There was another shrieking snarl from behind them, and at the same moment, Draco, who couldn’t see what was happening there  _anyway_ because Potter had his arm around Draco and had turned him towards his mother, saw his mother reach out a hand towards him, her mouth moving in words that Draco couldn’t hear.  
  
Then a shield of fire formed around her, and Draco felt another cold bite in the air next to his cheek.  
  
He struck out, wildly, lashing with one arm, and Potter cursed and dragged him even closer. Draco almost thought that would have helped if he had felt an ordinary chest behind him, instead of the straps of wood and iron that Potter had bound around him. It answered the question of how he had got so much taller, at least.  
  
But that wasn’t the question Draco was really concerned with right now, so much as the question of whether he would  _survive_.  
  
The snarls were quieting down, but Draco could still only see the cloth of Potter’s ridiculous cloak and robes when he turned his head. He struggled with one hand, scuffling at the air, and found Potter hissing at him to be quiet. It  _did_ sound like a real hiss, in Parseltongue, although Draco knew he couldn’t have understood that language. But it did an effective job of getting him to be quiet.  
  
Then there was one more wailing noise, and the silver fire came back and draped itself around Potter’s head and shoulders. And the sense of an attacker, of the Bard, was gone.  
  
Draco assumed that, anyway, because the next second Potter was moving away from him, creaking towards the sacred back of the shop, behind a red curtain, where not even Draco had ever been invited. He knew that Madam Royal kept certain tricks of her trade there she didn’t want anyone to know about. And he wasn’t surprised when she moved towards Potter, her head uplifted and her arms spread and her hair rising a little behind her in the wake of some protective magic.  
  
“I’m sorry, Mr. Klein,” she said. “But you cannot go back there.”  
  
“The Bard of Morning’s Hope just escaped out the back of your shop,” said Potter roughly, in his own voice, and for the first time ever, Draco saw Madam Royal startled. “I bloody well have to look and find out where he went, and how he got  _in_ in the first place.”  
  
Madam Royal considered it visibly, and then she nodded and said, “Very well. But I will go with you, to make sure you don’t disturb anything.”  
  
Impatiently, Potter nodded, and she pulled the curtain back enough for him to duck through. Draco took a long, slow breath and moved across to his mother. The fire had faded around her enough for him to touch her. Narcissa laid one shaking hand on his shoulder and looked closely into his face.  
  
“Are you all right?” she breathed.  
  
“Yes,” said Draco. He wanted to say he should be, after the way Potter had hugged him, but that sounded weirdly intimate, and anyway, he doubted it would have satisfied his mother. He stood patiently still and let her look him over, running her hands up and down his sides as if she was looking for cracked ribs. Well, maybe it would be likely, from Potter’s embrace.  
  
“Good,” said Narcissa at last, and stepped away from him, frowning. “Did you notice something?”  
  
Draco tensed. “What?” If it was something that proved Potter or Madam Royal was in league with the Bard, then he hadn’t. And he wondered how wise it would be to stay here, if either of them was.  
  
“The Bard’s attack only focused on you this time. Not me.” Narcissa twisted her fingers together and looked at him solemnly. “It makes me wonder if the only way I survived is because the Bard realized his attack was directed at the wrong person.”  
  
“Why would it be?” Draco asked, but then looked at her left arm. Of course. She didn’t carry the Dark Mark. And while not every one of the Bard’s victims did, all of them had fought actively at the Battle of Hogwarts. His mother hadn’t. She had stayed out of the way, and never cast a single curse. Draco knew his father had, if only in self-defense.  
  
“It’s a clue, maybe,” said Draco, and then shook his head. “But if the Bard is so selective in his choice of victims, why did he attack you at all?”  
  
“That, I don’t know.” Narcissa smoothed her skirts down and gave Draco a narrow look. “It’s a mystery.”  
  
 _One I’m heartily tired of,_ Draco thought, turning to stare again at the back curtain of the shop,  _and would like to solve._  
  
*  
  
Harry puttered around the back of the shop. He had to admit it was neat, much neater than the corresponding space in Madam Malkin’s, where he’d spent time both to be fitted for his own robes and when a few crimes had occurred there. There were no huge, towering piles of cloth here, only neat shelves that rose from the floor like bookshelves and contained bolts of cloth and the finished products.  
  
Harry knew there had to be some reason the Bard had come from this direction, though. And he wasn’t prone to giving up, the way that he knew some Aurors in this situation would have, declaring the case unsolvable and reporting directly to the Ministry so they could take over. He had to find something. He moved behind the shelves, and Madam Royal followed him at once, saying, “It’s only my workroom.”  
  
It did look like that, Harry had to admit, just a simple room with a table and scissors and measuring instruments and what looked like one of the silver things that had sat on Dumbledore’s desk before Harry destroyed it in fifth year. Harry paused, then moved closer.  
  
The instrument wasn’t the same, though, he saw almost at once. It had an obvious purpose, balanced scales that would dip beneath different kinds of cloth. Disappointed, Harry drew back and looked around again.  
  
There was a teakettle. There was a door out into Diagon Alley, but when Harry cast a spell known only to Aurors that would tell him how much time had passed since it was open, the answer came back as five hours. There was a photograph of a lovely woman who looked a lot like Madam Royal, except taller. She smiled and waved when she saw Harry looking.  
  
“That’s my Mariana, who flirts with everyone,” said Madam Royal, shaking her head. Then she planted her hands on her hips and looked up at Harry. “And I’ll thank you to keep your eyes away from her, unless you intend to do something about it.”  
  
Harry was startled into laughing. “How can I? When she’s not here and I am?”  
  
“And she’s in Brazil, anyway,” Madam Royal agreed, and herded him gently but persistently back to the front of the shop. “Did you find anything that would help?” Her tone said how greatly she doubted that.  
  
Harry took a long, slow breath. He thought he had, but the difficulties of confronting it made him feel ill. On the other hand, so had the theory about the Bard being a hero of the Battle of Hogwarts at first, and he had got over it.  
  
“Maybe,” he said, and ignored her surprised expression. “Thank you for letting me look around back here.” He started towards the front of the shop.  
  
“It’s a small price for the information you’ve allowed me to have in its place, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry turned around slowly, because he had to when wearing the contraption that made him into Leonis Klein. “If you don’t keep this to yourself, then you would be surprised what I can do,” he said softly.  
  
“The information would lose value if I spread it around.” Madam Royal spread her hand in a small, deprecating gesture. “And I am here in Knockturn Alley more for the robes made of rare furs that I sell than because of any inherent affinity for other Dark Arts. If you let me have the privilege of measuring you and clothing you, sometimes, then the temptation to ever spread the information at all would fade.”  
  
Harry had to snort a little. “You wouldn’t want to tell others that you’re costuming Harry Potter?”  
  
Madam Royal half-shook her head. “To be indiscreet with any of my clients’ information would hurt my business more than it would help.” She nodded to a cluster of silver spheres hanging in a corner of the ceiling. “Those collect and measure the magic signatures of those who come in here, and clients with powerful magic can feel the lingering aftereffects of other clients. They would know I was serving a strong wizard. That’s the best advertisement I could have.”  
  
Harry squinted at the spheres. Now that he listened to them, he could hear the faint interruption in the running ripple of magic all around him, the break in the current. They felt like other devices he had run into that did much the same thing. He thought Madam Royal was probably telling the truth.  
  
“All right,” he said. “If it’s nothing more than that, you’re welcome to it.” He turned and creaked back into the front of the shop, where the Malfoys stood up when they saw him. Harry nodded to them. “If you are done?”  
  
They weren’t, but Harry stayed with them behind the curtain this time, simply averting his gaze when Malfoy’s chest was bared or Narcissa fitted the gown. And then they went out onto the cobblestones again, and Harry got in front of them to lead them out of Knockturn Alley.  
  
“You found something,” Malfoy whispered from behind him. “I  _know._ You have that look in your eyes.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “It could easily be nothing.”  
  
And it might. That was what he tried to tell himself. After all, he had only been in the headquarters of the Muggleborn Legion a few times. He didn’t even know if Madam Royal was Muggleborn herself.  
  
What he  _did_ know was that he had last seen a photograph of her daughter Mariana perched on Dennis Creevey’s desk.


	9. Too Many Details

“Not interrupting your little chats with Malfoys, am I, mate?”  
  
“Ron!” Harry turned around with a grin on his face. He had expected someone to firecall him to report on the hint he had dropped off with the Aurors last night about Mariana Royal and Dennis’s photograph of her. He hadn’t known the reporter would be Ron, or that he would come in person.  
  
Ron smiled and shook his hand, while glancing with exaggerated care over Harry’s shoulder for Malfoys. Harry shoved him into a chair and sat down next to him, gesturing with his own cup. “Do you want something to eat?” As usual, Kreacher had made a huge meal, and while Harry was keeping it under Warming Charms for Malfoy and Narcissa when they woke up, Ron wouldn’t make a huge dent in it.  
  
“No, I’ve eaten.” Ron paused with his hands on the table in front of him. “There’s been a complication with Dennis.”  
  
Harry nodded, not really surprised. There were always complications there, from Dennis’s popularity that wouldn’t let Harry arrest him to his relationship to the rest of the Muggleborn Legion and their support of their leader. “What is it?”  
  
Ron hooked his thumbs together and twiddled them. “He said that he would speak about Mariana Royal, but only to you. And that you had to come to him alone, without Auror backup, and without—guests.” He met Harry’s gaze and twitched one eyebrow, as if Harry wouldn’t be able to figure that out himself.  
  
“Yeah, I understand,” Harry said, and then met Ron’s eyes. “You know the favor I’m going to ask, right?”  
  
Ron sighed slowly. “I understand, but I don’t have to like it.”  
  
“I would never ask you to  _like_ it,” Harry reassured him. “I just don’t trust the Malfoys with anyone else right now. And look at it this way. You can torture them as much as being around them is going to torture you.”  
  
Ron’s face lit up. “I never thought of it that way! Thanks, mate.” He pumped Harry’s hand and started to say something else, but Malfoy wandered down the stairs into the kitchen, and Harry got to see the inevitable confrontation a lot sooner than he’d expected.  
  
Malfoy’s face was softly flushed, his hair sleep-tousled. Harry blinked. He had thought that Malfoy would be immaculately groomed and glaring at Ron, not turning his head slowly back and forth and blinking as though he could make Ron go away if he shut his eyes fast enough.  
  
Malfoy was kind of cute this way, actually.  
  
Harry snorted to himself. Yes, Malfoy was cute, all right, when he wasn’t doing something like insisting on going to a posh clothes shop so he could almost die.  
  
Harry stood up and nodded to Ron. “All right. I’ll go interview Dennis, as long as you don’t have anything back at the office that needs to be taken care of and you can stay here for a while.”  
  
“Count on me.” Ron drew his wand and carefully arranged his feet on the table, watching Malfoy. Harry could tell the minute he woke up and really began to notice. His face flushed and his eyes darted back and forth between Ron’s boots and the table as if he was waiting for the first scuff-mark to appear. Ron grinned at him.  
  
“Potter promised that  _he_ would be here to protect us,” said Malfoy in glacial accents, and his eyes came back to Harry.  
  
“I did promise that,” said Harry, and he knew he was flushing a bit. “But I didn’t anticipate this. Someone who could be connected to the Bard—the Muggleborn I told you about who showed up the first day we were here and told me about a missing woman from the Legion—will only speak to me alone.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a smile that made him resemble the sneering boy from Hogwarts, if someone had plunked that boy down in the middle of a dangerous situation and made him grow brains. Well, in a way, Harry thought, they  _had_. “So you’ll go running off to visit someone who could be the Bard the day after you defeated the Bard? How wonderful.”  
  
“No one has actually defeated the Bard,” Harry pointed out. “I foiled one attack. And with help.” Malfoy nodded absently as though remembering Harry’s explanation for the silver fire from Snape’s memories. “If Creevey’s the Bard, then he already knows about it, anyway, so I’m not giving much away.”  
  
“Walking into his clutches—”  
  
“Killing Harry would be stupid if he asked him to come visit when other people know where Harry’s going,” Ron interrupted casually. “And I don’t think the Bard is stupid. He’s obsessed.” He glanced at Malfoy for a minute. “So obsessed, in fact, that he doesn’t target people other than the ones that fulfill his specifications. Harry doesn’t.”  
  
“That doesn’t explain the Bard’s attack on my mother a few nights ago,” Malfoy snapped, turning towards Ron. “And you don’t know anything about it, Weasley. So stay out of it.”  
  
Ron grinned. “Don’t know anything about it? I’ve been one of the lead Aurors on the case for months.”  
  
“Well, I reckon that’s why it hasn’t been solved yet, then,” Malfoy muttered.  
  
Harry winced. He could just imagine how that insult would have ripped Ron out of his chair in seconds if they were back at Hogwarts.  
  
But some people had changed since Hogwarts, and Ron proved he was one of them after a moment of sitting so intensely still that Harry could almost hear his bones creaking with the effort of it. Then he nodded and said, “We all have our opinions, Malfoy,” and took out a slip of parchment from his pocket. “This is the Floo address of the Muggleborn Legion,” he added, handing it to Harry.  
  
Harry blinked as he looked down at the neatly-written words. They weren’t the same as the last address he had visited, when he’d gone to ask Dennis some questions. “They’ve changed headquarters?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ron said, and met and held Harry’s gaze, and the silent surmise passed back and forth between them. Harry nodded and walked towards the door to pick up his cloak.  
  
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Harry said, and that was as far as he got before someone grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. Harry locked his elbows against his sides and snatched up his wand.  
  
Malfoy was the one who had turned him, though, not some mysterious force of the Bard’s power, and he was staring at Harry in a way that made his heart squirm a little. “So you’re going to go off and leave us under the care of our worst enemies, is that it?” he whispered. “After specifically promising that you wouldn’t do that?”  
  
“I thought the Bard was your worst enemy right now, not the Weasleys,” said Harry, and held Malfoy’s eyes until he turned his head away a little. “Listen. I know you’re grieving. I promise that Ron can be a professional. He’ll defend you if the Bard comes back. He’s one of the few Aurors I trust to keep his promises and shield you completely. I promise that he has no sympathy for what the Bard has done.”  
  
“Some of them do?” Malfoy looked a little sick.  
  
Harry nodded gently. “No one I would ever assign to guard you. They’ve been pretty open about their sympathies, and I think they’re absurd. But please accept that I know what I’m doing, and you can survive a few hours without me.”  
  
Malfoy looked away from him as if pondering in his head how long the last few Bard attacks had taken. Then he nodded, still looking away from Harry. “Then go, and get back as soon as you can.”  
  
He walked over to the breakfast Kreacher had left. In the meantime, Ron had removed his boots from the table and was watching Malfoy thoughtfully. He made a little “go on” motion when Harry caught his eye, and Harry shrugged and went out the door, making sure he had his cloak slung firmly around his shoulders. He had cast a few defensive enchantments on it that made it his own portable set of wards. That should ease any attack he might suffer from Dennis or other Bard sympathizers.  
  
Harry’s mind was already racing, reaching into the future. Why had Dennis asked to talk to Harry, specifically? Was it because he knew Harry had blocked some of the Bard’s attacks? Because he thought Harry had the best chance to take the Bard down? Because Harry was the one protecting the Malfoys?  
  
In that case, it did make Harry wonder if he should leave the house and the Malfoys alone. He paused with one hand on the door and turned back.  
  
But Ron was only watching tolerantly as Malfoy ate, and in the almost-supernatural way of best friends, he saw why Harry was hesitating. He made another “go on” motion, and clapped his hand over his heart. A silent promise, Harry knew. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Malfoy  _or_ Narcissa while Harry was gone.  
  
Harry nodded back, and walked over to the Floo connection. He had settled on at least half-a-dozen reasons for why Dennis Creevey might want to see him, but nothing could beat going there and actually finding out.  
  
*  
  
Draco kept his back turned to Weasley as he started to eat. He wanted to take the plate back upstairs, but he knew what his mother would say if he woke her from a sound sleep. And he also knew what she would say about him fleeing the kitchen when a Weasley was there, not able to take even that much of one’s company.  
  
Not that Draco would think of it as  _fleeing._ But when he began thinking of it through his mother’s eyes, it was hard to stop.  
  
“How did Harry keep the Bard off you yesterday, anyway?”  
  
Draco twitched. He had thought both he and Weasley would observe the rule of silence, and that could be the way to avoid a duel that would destroy the house. But if one person wouldn’t observe it, the other one still could. Draco stood up. He didn’t need to go into the bedroom to eat upstairs, of course. He remembered a library that had looked interesting.  
  
“I just wanted to know,” said Weasley. “He told me that he did it, but not the details of how. If there’s a good weapon against the Bard, then we ought to know about it so we can use it.”  
  
Draco turned around. He knew he had a nasty smile, and perhaps later he would feel sorry about it. Right now, he didn’t. “What? In other situations, with people who  _deserve_  to be protected? Is that what you were going to say?”  
  
Weasley stared at him. “Of course not, Malfoy, stop acting stupid. Even if the Bard is obsessed with you right now, though, there could be other victims any day. And we need to know the weapon. I’m surprised Harry didn’t tell me already.”  
  
That led Draco to a rush of exhilarating conclusions. Without a doubt, the  _best_ one was that Potter hadn’t told Weasley about the silver fire because it was meant to protect Slytherins, or maybe because of where it came from, and that meant Potter didn’t trust Weasley.  
  
Draco was going to reveal the secret, like a good little citizen concerned for people other than himself, and then Weasley might doubt that Potter was a saint. And perhaps he could affect their friendship along with it.  
  
“He used a kind of silver fire,” he said, watching Weasley closely. “It surrounded the invisible force that the Bard manifested as, and bound it. He’s using the same fire to ward a photograph of my father upstairs.”  
  
Weasley’s brow had been twitching in confusion that Draco valued, but now, he snorted and waved a hand. “Oh,  _that_. Well, it’s true that would be of limited use in other situations. He would have to be right on the spot to unleash the fire. And we don’t know if the Bard always sends an invisible force to do his dirty work for him.”  
  
Draco bit his lip hard in confusion, and then shrugged. It was hard to see why Potter would have kept the secret of the silver fire from Weasley, come to that. “What do you think about the Bard entering the house through my father’s photograph?”  
  
“I think it was damn silly to keep it here, if that’s the source, or Harry even suspected it was.” For a moment, Weasley tapped his fingers on the table, and gazed seriously at Draco. “Why did he?”  
  
“To ward it,” said Draco, and did feel a little twist of smugness, because he had just said that, which was a sign that Weasley wasn’t paying attention, which was a sign that he wasn’t fit to be watching over them.  
  
Granted, Draco would probably have to contemplate that insight as he slid into the dark waters of unconsciousness or death because the Bard had come for him and Potter wasn’t here to stop the maniac—but at least knowing he had been right and Potter wrong would give him a bit of satisfaction.  
  
“Well, that makes sense,” said Weasley, stealing his satisfaction, and got up to walk behind Draco to the sink. Draco tensed, but Weasley didn’t curse him, just calling, “Kreacher!” and starting to give him some instructions.  
  
Draco stared at Weasley’s back, because he had to wonder what the fuck was going on here, and then he saw the way Weasley’s lips quivered and lifted.  _Of course._ Weasley knew that acting as polite as he could would annoy Draco. It was why he had even taken his feet off the table without Draco asking him to. Well. Two could play at that game, and be sitting quietly when Potter came back.  
  
Draco smiled innocently, sat down, folded his arms in front of him on the table, and asked, when Weasley turned around, “How has life been treating you?”  
  
Weasley’s dropped jaw was absolutely  _priceless_.  
  
*  
  
“Thank you for coming to see me, Harry.”  
  
Harry raised one eyebrow as he took the chair across from Dennis. It might be true that the Muggleborn Legion had moved their headquarters—though since Harry had come in by Floo, it was hard to be sure of that—but Dennis’s office hadn’t changed at all from the last time he saw it. It was still a large, grey room, the desk with its chair facing away from the door and into the corner where the large hearth loomed. Photographs and small scrolls hung on the walls, detailing people the Legion wanted to recruit and enemies they planned to fight against. Dennis kept mostly paperwork on the desk, and the photograph that Harry had noticed before. Mariana Royal.  
  
Dennis picked up the picture and handed it to him. Harry turned it around to make sure he hadn’t been mistaken, hard to imagine as it was that he would be. No, the same tall dark-skinned woman smiled at him and waved.  
  
“Mariana is a half-blood,” said Dennis calmly. “Her father was a Muggle. She understands the prejudice and the need to fight against it better than a lot of half-bloods do.”  
  
Harry looked up and held Dennis’s eyes as he handed the picture back. “Like me, I suppose you mean.”  
  
“You’re an Auror,” said Dennis quietly. “You believe in these abstract ideals of justice that don’t apply much to the real world. When pure-bloods control the justice system, how much leverage do you imagine Muggleborns get to use?”  
  
“I’ve never let a criminal go because of who they are or who they’re related to,” Harry said.  
  
“And the cases that actually get to come to trial? The ones that the Wizengamot decides on? The laws that get passed?” Dennis shook his head slowly. “You can’t influence the whole of the justice system, Harry. Even though you might come closer than other people, with the power that your name has.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “You know, I am sympathetic to your cause, but not when you put people in danger because you want greater justice.”  
  
“They won’t give it to us, so we have to take it,” Dennis said simply. He leaned back, watched Harry once more, and then added, “You don’t sympathize with the Bard at all? I know that Lucius Malfoy was your enemy, and so was Draco, and yet you put your life in danger to protect them yesterday.”  
  
Harry sat very still. Then he drew his wand.  
  
Dennis held up his hands. “I didn’t instigate the attack. You could use Veritaserum on me, and it would still be true.”  
  
“But you saw something,” Harry said quietly. He was thinking of the way that Dennis had showed up at Grimmauld Place long before the officials details of Lucius Malfoy’s death had got released. “I want you to come with me, and explain what it is you saw.” He added, when Dennis’s mouth opened, “Hermione thinks the Bard might just be a roving curse, conjured by someone who wanted revenge on Death Eaters. It would be interesting if that caster was among the Legion, wouldn’t it?”  
  
Dennis rolled his eyes and stood up to come around the desk. “You have no idea,” he said. “I have tried to give you some clues, like Tatyana’s name, but you really have no idea.”  
  
Harry nodded grimly. That was enough to take him in for suspicion, if he had been helping or spying for the Bard and had told no one. “Even if they’re Death Eater lives, they’re still lives,” he said, as he bound ropes around Dennis’s wrists. “It should be up to the justice system to deal with them, the way they put Lucius in prison for a while. Not you.”  
  
“I’m not the one dealing with them,” said Dennis, and stared straight ahead at the wall even when Harry walked over to catch his eye. In the end, Harry had to shake his head and take Dennis in without getting the answers right then.  
  
But he did wonder. He wondered about someone who could manage to do the smuggling he  _knew_ Dennis had done, and fool some seasoned Aurors if not Harry, and who had a photograph on his desk that was the copy of the one hanging in the back of Madam Royal’s shop. He had to wonder if someone who was clever enough could conjure the curse when he wanted it, pull it back when he didn’t want it, and open doors like this through the help of someone else’s magical theory. After all, there were more than a hundred people in the Muggleborn Legion, a lot of them experienced wizards.  
  
No matter that Dennis’s own magic wasn’t powerful enough for this. His help might be.  
  
 _Just one of the things I’m going to find out,_ Harry promised himself, and laid a careful, heavy hand on Dennis’s shoulder as he escorted him out.


	10. Bringing Him In

“Yes, I think you did the right thing,” said Kingsley, even though he was avoiding Harry’s gaze. Harry refrained from rolling his eyes, but it took everything he had. Kingsley hadn’t wanted him to arrest Dennis when it was simply the smuggling case that might cause a problem. He probably thought that word getting out of _this_ arrest would be worse.  
  
But Harry had done what he had to. There was more than enough suspicion connected to Dennis to bring him in. What happened from here on out might or might not lead to finding the Bard, or Dennis remaining in custody. But Harry had done the right thing.  
  
“Are you going to have Grimstone and Adbar question him?” Harry asked. They were in Kingsley’s office, where Kingsley was or was pretending to be very busy with paperwork. Harry had seen Dennis to a holding cell and tested the efficacy of its wards himself before he came back to make his report to Kingsley.  
  
“Why them?” That piece of parchment must be really fascinating, for Kingsley to have so much of his attention on it.  
  
Harry restrained his impatience and said, “They know more about the kinds of magic the Bard leaves behind than anyone. They might consult with Hermione. They might also be able to sense that magic on Dennis,” he added, because he was a bit tired of Kingsley acting as though a popular political leader must never do anything wrong.  
  
Kingsley finally sighed and looked up at him. “No, Harry,” he admitted, in what sounded like a croaking voice. “I’m not going to have Grimstone and Adbar question him.”  
  
Harry tensed and locked his hands together behind his back, his head lifting. “Then—”  
  
He was afraid that Kingsley was simply going to say they had to let Dennis go, but Kingsley waved his hand and cut off Harry's prepared speech. “I thought I would leave you that honor.”  
  
“Right,” said Harry, after a moment in which he had to recover from feeling as though someone had thrust an icicle through his chest. “Am I allowed to question him on the smuggling case, too? You know, the one that he’s _strongly connected to_ and is manipulating public opinion like any pure-blood to avoid being arrested for?”  
  
“You question him on the suspicions he was arrested for,” said Kingsley firmly. “And on the information that he volunteered of his own free will. He didn’t need to come to you and tell you to search for Tatyana Kingston. Yet he did. Why? And why to you, of all people, when he had to know you suspected him for other things?” Kingsley finally paused in sorting the parchment and looked up at Harry, holding his eyes. “Maybe you can get enough evidence to convict him of _one_ thing, anyway.”  
  
_I had the evidence we needed to arrest him. You were the one who decided not to move on that._ But Harry tucked in his lips, hard, when he wanted to speak, and all he did was nod. "Right, sir," he said. "Of course." He made a little bow and walked towards the door.  
  
"Harry."  
  
Harry seriously considered walking on as if he had never heard, but as important as the Bard case was, it wasn't the end of the world, and defying Kingsley might be the end of his job. He turned around, although with folded arms to show how reluctant he was, and Kingsley made a little placating gesture.  
  
"We _have_ to consider the political realities," Kingsley said. "Not only the realities of right and wrong. I hate it as much as you do, but that's the way it is. And Dennis is too popular to arrest him wantonly."  
  
"You sound as though you're talking about arresting him for prostitution," said Harry. "Sir. _I'm_ not. I'm talking about connections to a case that you thought it important enough to assign Aurors to." Merlin knew that Aurors weren't assigned to every case, even the ones that Harry thought they should have been. But Kingsley had thought this smuggling case was important--until he realized who Harry's prime suspect was. "And now, it's murder."  
  
"You realize that some people agree with the Bard," said Kingsley.  
  
"Do you?"   
  
"Merlin, _no_!" Kingsley's face was as pale as it could go. He raised one hand as if he would shield himself from Harry's accusation, then lowered his palm to the desk and looked at Harry imploringly again. "I'm just talking about why we need to move slowly and only arrest someone when we have a preponderance of evidence."  
  
"Which we do now," Harry reminded him. Honestly, he was a little surprised that he _had_ got away with walking Dennis into custody, and more than surprised that Kingsley had chosen Harry to be the one to question him.  
  
"Yes. Now." Kingsley relaxed enough to give him another pleading look.  
  
_He wants me to say that I was wrong about recommending that we arrest Dennis for the smuggling case._ Harry waited, arms folded, saying nothing, and Kingsley finally glanced away and sighed and said, "You can go on, then. The wardens of the holding cells have been directed to cooperate with you in every way."  
  
"Thank you," said Harry in measured tones, and walked out.  
  
*  
  
  
"There's one thing I want to clear up right away," said Dennis, placing his hands on the interrogation table and leaning towards Harry.  
  
All Harry did was look cautiously back at him. He knew Dennis had to be a much more skillful and powerful wizard than he had seemed to be if he could do the Bard's magic, or even if he had assisted in the Bard's rampage. So Harry kept one hand on his wand at all times, even as he shifted back in his seat and smiled politely at Dennis.  
  
"What's that?" Harry asked, when it became clear that Dennis wasn't going to continue the conversation like a normal person.  
  
"What I'm lying about and what I'm not." Dennis seemed a little pale, a break in that calm mask for the first time, but he met Harry's eyes without hesitation. "I want to speak my interrogation under Veritaserum."  
  
Harry barely avoided saying something. He didn't remember the last time a just-accused criminal had willingly taken Veritaserum; mostly it was used on people who were so compromised that they knew they would be sentenced anyway, and hoped to gain some mercy through a willing confession.  
  
But it was all to the better if Dennis confessed now. That way, they could more easily track down the Bard, or shut him away. Harry nodded and stood up. "I'll have some brought. Do you want someone else to witness the interrogation, as well?" They had started having at least two Aurors present at Veritaserum interrogations some years ago, in order to prevent both abuse of the Veritaserum by a single questioner and the prisoner managing to slip some lies past a single one.  
  
Dennis, though, leaned back in his seat with his eyes flashing. "I'll confess to you only, or not at all. At least I know you could never _be_ the Bard, or helping him," he added, when Harry hesitated. "You fought Voldemort all the time, and I know you want to arrest him. Other Aurors, who might sympathize with the Bard, I'm not so sure about."  
  
Harry leveled him with a piercing gaze. " _You_ sympathize with the Bard."  
  
Dennis paused, then gave him a dark smile. "Not enough to take the fall for him."  
  
Harry nodded. "Then you'll confess to me alone, but I want you to know I'll be putting the memories in a Pensieve to show others later." That was the only exception granted for a prisoner to confess under Veritaserum to a single questioner, if the prisoner agreed to the Pensieve notion.  
  
Dennis sat there and worried his lip for a second before he inclined his head. "Agreed."  
  
_He must really be worried about being mistaken for the Bard,_ Harry thought, keeping his wand leveled at Dennis while he backed to the door and called out for the Veritaserum. _Well, I can't blame him._ The Bard was going to Azkaban for the rest of his life, there was no doubt about that.  
  
The Veritaserum arrived. The Auror trainee who brought it seemed all puffed-up and important, probably assuming he was the one who would get to help Harry with the interrogation, but Harry smiled at him, took the Veritaserum, said, "Thanks," and shut the door in his face.  
  
When he turned back, Dennis had his hands gripping the arms of the chair so hard that it looked as if he was about to break his fingers. Harry held his gaze. "You can still change your mind," he said  
  
"No," Dennis breathed, and let go of the arms of the chair, sticking his tongue out to receive the Veritaserum.  
  
Harry shook his head and placed the regulation three drops on Dennis's tongue. It was his funeral.  
  
And possibly, though Harry was reluctant to think about how hard his heart was pounding, his answer to the mystery of the Bard.  
  
Dennis blinked, and his eyes went glassy. Harry sat down across from him, asked him his name and his occupation and a few other test questions, and then leaped straight into the one that most concerned him.  
  
"Are you the Bard of Morning's Hope?"  
  
Dennis stared straight at him. Harry held his breath.  
  
"No."  
  
Harry shut his eyes. Well, there went one lead, anyway, and maybe most of his justification to hold Dennis for questioning.  
  
But all wasn't lost. "Do you know who is?" he demanded, and once again leaned over the table when Dennis stayed silent for a second.  
  
"No."   
  
Harry held back the frustrated impulse to pound his fist into the table--it wouldn't change anything and also wouldn't look good in those Pensieve memories--and sighed. Perhaps Dennis had managed to dodge or lie somehow, as people could under Veritaserum sometimes if they weren't asked exact questions, but Harry's questions had been as blunt and straightforward as he knew how to make them. It was hard to imagine how one _did_ dodge questions like that.  
  
"Why did you bring me the name of Tatyana Kingston?" he asked, instead of giving up.  
  
"I don't like her much, and her disappearances do coincide with Bard murders." Dennis faced him unflinchingly. "I hoped you would find something on her and arrest her to get her out of my business."  
  
"What is your business? What do you mean?" Harry couldn't simply give up on his best lead in the Bard murders, not without asking more questions.  
  
"Running the Muggleborn Legion." Dennis flinched and stared at the ground for a second, but then brought his head up and fastened his eyes on Harry. "You know as well as I do how unfair it is for pure-bloods to control so much of our world."  
  
"You're talking about the way they twist the justice system and use their own popularity or family name to get out of paying for their crimes?" Harry asked, folding his hands on the table as if he was considering the matter deeply.  
  
"That's the most important thing, yes," said Dennis. "If there is a crime, there should be _justice_. No one should be able to play a game with numbers and opinions, or _money,_ or _blood_ , to get out of paying for it."  
  
"Then what about you?" Harry asked softly. "How is making yourself the head of the Muggleborn Legion and popular with Muggleborns, and then using that hold on public opinion to keep yourself safe from justice, any different?"  
  
Dennis sweated for a moment, but Harry didn't think the Veritaserum had lost its hold. Rather, Dennis didn't know the answer to that himself, and it was taking the potion a minute to drag what he really believed from inside his soul.  
  
"I haven't committed any crimes comparable to theirs," said Dennis, with a jerk of his head that Harry thought was meant to indicate all the pure-bloods in the Ministry. "You would know that if you weren't so bloody _blinded_ by the airs they all put on. As if they're really purer or better than anyone else!"  
  
"No," said Harry softly. "They aren't. But neither are you. What connection does Mariana Royal have with the Bard murders?"  
  
"None," said Dennis at once. "Leave her out of this."  
  
"What does it mean that there was a picture of her on your desk and also a picture of her at the same shop where the latest murder attempt took place?" Harry asked, and saw another trickle of sweat creep down Dennis's face.  
  
"It means--that there was a picture of her in both places." Dennis was gasping a little now, but Harry knew he couldn't successfully fight the Veritaserum. Otherwise, he would have done it before now, to give a better-sounding answer about Kingston's name and actually defend himself when it came to the accusation of hiding from justice. "Nothing else."  
  
Harry cocked his head. "Then why did the attack happen in Madam Royal's shop?"  
  
"I don't know." Dennis's eyes flickered, but he gave the answer bluntly and without hesitation, the way he had the first two.  
  
"Why was it an attack that didn't succeed, unlike so many others?" Harry was curious whether Dennis knew about the silver fire Harry wielded from Snape's memories, and whether Harry could make him admit that.  
  
"Because you're _you_ ," Dennis said, and swished his head violently from side to side. "Has any attack succeeded since you took up this case? Even though you could argue the Malfoys deserve to pay the most of all?"  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. "You think I have some unique power or ability to protect the Malfoys from the Bard?"  
  
"Yes," said Dennis, and then clamped his mouth shut and looked mortified.  
  
If Harry had been questioning someone with a more tenuous connection to the case, he might have let it go. Lots of people would be embarrassed if they had to confess their reverence for him outright instead of in a letter or private daydream. But this was Dennis, and this was a string of ten murders. "What do you think it is?"  
  
"That fire you were weaving into the wards," said Dennis, his head hanging forwards as though he was ashamed to meet Harry's eyes. "And you--you mean so much to so many people. I think the Bard isn't pressing his attacks because he sees you as a hero. He would rather find some way to take out his victims that doesn't involve hurting you."  
  
Harry clenched his fingers hard into his robes. "Dennis, you said you didn't know who the Bard was."  
  
"I don't."  
  
"Then how can you possibly know what he thinks?"  
  
"I only know what people--similar to him think," said Dennis, and he gasped and put his hands over his face, mumbling out from between his fingers. "Like me, for example. And a lot of the other Muggleborns in the Legion. They've been unhappy about the Bard even attacking the Malfoys while they're under your custody. They think he should wait."  
  
Harry sighed. This was the truth again, it seemed. "What kind of magic is the Bard using to get past wards?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"What kind of magic is he using to kill so many people in so many different ways and leave his signature behind?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
And so it went. No matter what questions Harry asked after that, Dennis's answers were negative or nebulous. And when he asked again who the Bard was and whether Dennis knew or had helped him, all the answers were negative.  
  
Harry asked in all the different ways he could think of, and finally stood up and stared at Dennis. Dennis stared back, his face pale and exhausted, his eyes still glossy with the effects of the potion.  
  
"I wish I knew whether I could trust you," Harry whispered.  
  
"You can trust the Veritaserum," said Dennis, his head bobbing in tiredness. "You have to trust it."  
  
That much was true. Harry did, though, have to ask another question. "Would you be willing to have another Auror come in here and question you under Veritaserum?"  
  
"No," said Dennis at once, and met Harry's eyes strongly. "And since I volunteered to take it and you don't have the evidence to tie me to a crime, you can't force me to."  
  
Dennis knew the law. _When it suited him,_ Harry thought cynically, and nodded. "Then I'll have the Veritaserum in the vial checked over, to make sure it's not been tampered with, and you checked over, to make sure you're not resisting."  
  
Dennis only nodded back, and Harry backed up to the door, keeping his wand trained on Dennis, his frown deep. He would get what help he could, and show his Pensieve memories to the others, and maybe that would be enough to help him come up with the angle he had probably missed.  
  
The angle he knew he had missed, no matter how carefully or cleverly Dennis had concealed it.  
  
"Harry."  
  
Harry paused in the middle of opening the door. "Yeah?"  
  
"I'm sorry." Dennis studied him with piercing eyes that only a minute later gained the dull sheen of the potion again. "I never meant to put you in this position."  
  
"But you would have put another Auror in it without regret?" Harry shook his head when Dennis's mouth opened and the answer got pulled out of him.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Harry sighed and opened the door. He would have the Veritaserum and Dennis both checked over, and hope that could settle some things.  
  
He had the sinking suspicion, though, that both the Veritaserum and Dennis were going to pass the test. And that left him with no more clues than before.  
  
Except the possibly useless one about the Bard maybe being a Muggleborn who thought he was a hero. Dennis had said he didn't think the Bard was a sentient curse, for what good that did.  
  
_And who doesn't bloody think I'm a hero?_   
  



	11. Effectiveness

"I hope Harry comes back soon," Weasley said, in such a low mutter that Draco probably wasn't supposed to hear it, and could ignore it if he wanted.  
  
Draco considered that, but honestly, he was as bored as Weasley with their mutual fencing. Each of them had said all the clever things they could possibly say, and he was considering calling on his mother, who was in the kitchen reading the  _Daily Prophet_ , to see whether she could play the perfect society hostess and make it better.  
  
Then he heard the scream. It brought him up off the couch and whipping around in seconds, his wand aimed into the kitchen, where he could see his mother rising to her feet with her hand pressed over her heart. But Draco, who'd been sitting as far into the drawing room and away from Weasley as he could get, couldn't see what she was staring at from this angle.  
  
He started to shout for Weasley to do something, but then realized he had. He hadn't even seen Weasley leap up from his own couch and run into the kitchen, but the ginger was there now, speaking softly and urgently to Draco's mother, one hand on her shoulder and the other aiming his wand ahead of him.  
  
 _I suppose Weasley is a trained Auror,_ Draco decided slowly, and ran around the couch. He doubted Weasley would be standing there and acting so calm if the Bard of Morning's Hope was actually in the kitchen. He seemed, rather, to be trying to get Narcissa to describe exactly what she had seen.  
  
"Did it come through the wards?" Weasley was asking. "Or between them?"  
  
 _What wards?_ Draco was generally unfamiliar with wards that could be seen from inside the house, unless they surrounded a safe or other place where one was keeping a precious object. By squinting at the wall, though, he made out one of the flickering leaps of silver fire that Potter had wound about Draco during the attack in Madam Royal's shop.  
  
"From between the strands." His mother's voice was calm and firm, something that impressed Draco. He turned around and found her tracing one finger in the air, outlining the small space where the flickers cut against each other. "It looked as if it was trying to form into a ball of ice, but it faded when I shouted."  
  
 _Screamed,_ Draco thought despite himself, and when he caught Weasley's eye, he was sure that the other man was thinking the same thing.  
  
Disconcerted to find himself sharing so much with Weasley, Draco asked, "Did it look as though someone was trying to Apparate in?" Sure, it should have been impossible to Apparate anywhere inside a house so strongly warded, never mind right through the wards, but much the same thing had happened in Madam Royal's shop. Draco wasn't going to start thinking that things like that were impossible, because the Bard seemed to take the impossible and bend it sideways on a regular basis.  
  
"No," said Narcissa slowly. "I could see the ball of ice, but nothing else. It was as if there was a small gate there that could send through the spell, instead of a person behind it."  
  
Draco hesitated. Gates were legend, but so were wizards that could leap through wards, attack in the middle of invisibility that no other spells could pierce, and turn their victims' bodies to ice.  
  
 _Father._  
  
Draco winced at the thought, but asked, "Do you think it could be a hostile spell, then, the way Potter was theorizing?"  
  
"A free-floating spell? Perhaps." Narcissa was speaking softly, eyes locked on the wards in the corner as though she was reliving what had happened in a sort of dream or trance. "There was a sense of hostility, too, as though someone was glaring at me through a window. It reminded me of--of things I haven't felt since the war."  
  
Draco nodded, knowing what she meant. Since the days when the Dark Lord had ruled the Manor, and hostile eyes had watched the progress of every Malfoy in case they got too close to the Dark Lord and earned his favor. For her to compare it to that must mean it had been hostility indeed.  
  
"Yes, that would fit with a free-floating spell or curse, too, the way  _my wife_ theorized," Weasley said, enunciating each word and glaring at Draco as if he thought Draco was trying to take the credit away from Granger by mentioning Potter. Draco stared back, bored. If he was trying to take the credit from Granger, he would have mentioned her as being wrong.  
  
"It would. And we might have to pursue that angle, now that we've had to give up on Dennis."  
  
Potter's voice came from the door that led outside. Draco drew his head back and let his arms fall limp with relief when he saw Potter shaking wetness from his cloak. "Why can't we get anything from Creevey?" he asked, because he wanted to conceal the limpness that was a disgrace to his independence.  
  
Potter strode into the kitchen, all active impatience and motion. Draco found himself watching from the corner of one eye, enjoying it far more than he should. Yes, Weasley was a trained Auror and had the speed to deal with something like this, had even established a rapport of sorts with Draco and Narcissa, and Draco was grateful for that.  
  
But Potter was the one who had done all sorts of  _other_ things, and if someone could prevail against the Bard--which Draco was beginning to wonder about--then it would probably be Potter.  
  
"Because I questioned him under Veritaserum, and he said that he wasn't the Bard, didn't know who was, and didn't know any of the magic that makes the Bard so dangerous," said Potter in disgust, and flung himself down in a kitchen chair hard enough to make it scrape across the floor. Draco heard the little cluck of Narcissa's tongue that she probably couldn't make herself suppress for any reason. "I don't know what else to do."  
  
"Well, what did the other Auror present during the interrogation say?" Weasley asked, logically enough, Draco thought.  
  
But Potter's face blushed a bright and searing red, and he muttered, "Dennis would only talk to me alone. On the condition that I could show Pensieve memories to everyone else, I agreed."  
  
" _Harry_ ," said Weasley, and sat up, laying his hands flat on the table. "You know that rule is there for a reason. I mean, some of the others are pretty stupid, I'll grant you, but that one--"  
  
"I know, Ron," said Potter, and sighed out. "Listen. If I fucked up, we'll know when I show you the memories, right? Or whoever else is going to look at them. I still don't know what Kingsley's official position is on having us both assigned to this case."  
  
" _Mr. Potter_ ," said Draco's mother, at her most frigid.  
  
Potter actually looked at her with a blank expression that Draco would have found amusing under other circumstances. Then he shrugged and said, "Right. I apologize for my language, Mrs. Malfoy."  
  
"Did you know there was another attack here a minute ago?" Draco interrupted, deciding that no matter how interesting this was, Weasley could wait until later to scold Potter, and so could his mum. And his interruption had the added delightful effect of making Weasley look disgruntled, since he'd had his mouth open to say something at the time. He closed it and shot a sideways look at Draco, who pretended not to notice.  
  
"There was?" Potter sat bolt upright as if throwing an extra garment off that he didn't need. "Why did no one tell me?" He turned and stared at Weasley in a way that made Draco sigh longingly. He would have given a lot, once, to turn Potter and Weasley against each other like that and make Potter stop defending a lot of worthless gingers.  
  
But he said, "My mother saw something like a ball of ice coming through the wards. It faded when she shouted and Weasley charged in here."  _See, I can be gracious, too,_ he thought, as Potter's eyes came towards him with an expression of slight amazement in them. "That adds to your theory that it's a hostile spell, I think."  
  
"Unless gates exist." His mother was calm again, Draco saw, sitting with her arms folded and her shawl draped neatly over her shoulders. "And I did feel a wave of hostile intent, which could have come from either a spell or a powerful Dark wizard."  
  
Potter abruptly sat up, his eyes widening and his fingers reaching out as if he was going to scoop something from the air. Draco narrowed his eyes at him. He understood gestures, he thought, and while he hadn't spent that much time around Potter since Hogwarts, this reminded him of a Seeker's gesture that he  _did_ understand. Potter was reaching for a Snitch.  
  
"What did that remind you of?" he asked quietly.  
  
Potter had slumped back in his seat, though, his mouth twisting. He looked at Draco and shook his head. Draco would remember that later, that Draco was the one he had looked at first, and not even Weasley, who he had been friends with for so long.  
  
"I don't know," Potter whispered. "I had it, for a second. But then I thought of something else, and by the time I came back to the first thought, it was gone."  
  
Draco grunted. He was about to offer to try Legilimency on Potter to bring back the first thought when Potter added, "But I suppose that it'll occur to me again," and turned to Draco's mother, asking, "Was the ball of ice real, or just an image? Or did it seem like it was becoming real as it moved through the wards?"  
  
"Real as it moved through the wards," Narcissa answered without hesitation. "How did you know enough to ask that question, Mr. Potter?"  
  
"It was connected with the second thought I had," Potter answered, sounding a little embarrassed. "About gates. I've heard that part of the reason gates don't exist or are assumed not to exist is because no one can figure out how things would  _move_ through them. There's magical theory behind Apparating and how a Portkey works, but nothing about that. But I thought...well, what if the object passing through it temporarily becomes an image, like an illusion, and then becomes real again on the other side? There are objects like that in the Department of Mysteries that we learned about in our Auror training. Prototypes of gates. Maybe this is something similar."  
  
His mother appeared interested in the idea, and she and Potter went on to discuss it. Draco only listened with half an ear, his eyes on Potter. He was sure that first, half-formed thought was important.   
  
He still intended to make the offer of Legilimency when he and Potter were alone, no matter how long he had to wait.  
  
*  
  
"You know that I know Legilimency, Potter?"  
  
Harry spluttered, looking up from the sink. He had gone into the bathroom to wash his face. He could still use magic to stay awake and shield the Malfoys for another few nights, but it left his eyes feeling as gritty, as though his body was complaining about the lack of real sleep.  
  
Malfoy was leaning against the bathroom door, his pale eyes fixed challengingly on Harry's face in the mirror. Harry shrugged, blinked away some water, and groped for the cloth that he'd put right there to dry his face, and which now unaccountably seemed to be missing. "Yes, I know. So what?"  
  
There was a slight brush of cloth against his arm. Harry jumped. Then he realized Malfoy had put the dry cloth in his hand, and was still watching his face through the glass.  
  
"I wanted to offer you the chance to recall that thought that you had this morning, the one you forgot," said Malfoy. He continued with barely a pause, although Harry was well-aware of the significance of that little beat of silence. "Of course, if you don't want me in your mind, I totally understand. Legilimency  _is_ a very intimate procedure."  
  
Harry turned around against the mirror and looked at Malfoy. He continued to meet Harry's eyes without flinching, which meant he probably wasn't making the offer just in order to humiliate Harry with something he found.  
  
Of course, Harry didn't think Malfoy would do that while he was grieving for his father and depending on Harry for protection anyway. He still thought Malfoy was petty and arrogant in some ways--witness the expedition he had insisted on making to the robe shop--but that level of pettiness was probably beyond him.  
  
"I'm not so reluctant to have you do that because of who you are," Harry answered, and gave one final swipe with the cloth at his face, hoping it didn't look as if he was wiping away tears. "But Legilimency hurt like a bitch the other times that I had it performed on me, and I don't really want to have that kind of headache if the Bard shows up tonight."  
  
Malfoy stared at him, seeming at a loss. "Who else did Legilimency on you?"  
  
"Snape, of course," Harry said dryly. "I mean, he was trying to teach me at the time, and I was being a stubborn little prat. But it still hurt a lot. And then Voldemort did it, and that was even worse."  
  
Malfoy snorted a little. "Intention matters to Legilimency even more than other types of magic. If they wanted to hurt you or hated you, then it would hurt." He took another long step forwards, and his gaze didn't waver from Harry's. "I don't hate you and the last thing I want right now is to hurt you."  
  
Harry considered him one more time, and then nodded. "Yeah, I can see that." He would never say that Malfoy's motives for wanting him alive were noble, but hell, Harry's motives weren't noble half the time, either. He was just better about concealing them and doing the right thing anyway than most people. He moved a step forwards. "How should we do this? Do you just need to see my eyes?"  
  
"You should sit down," Malfoy said, and gestured back into the bedroom.  
  
Harry stiffened a little. "I thought you said it wouldn't hurt. Snape's used to knock me down." The memories of falling to the floor in Snape's office and panting there like some torture victim were all floating near the top of his brain, which meant they were probably the first ones Malfoy would see when he peered into Harry's mind.  
  
 _Wonderful._  
  
"It's just unsettling, sometimes," Malfoy said gently. "You lose your sense of the world around you. And sometimes the Legilimens does, too. Or the memories might be shocking, even though I don't think this one will be. You could fall over."  
  
Harry pondered, for a moment, whether Malfoy's Legilimency would be that much different from Snape's after all. But he had already taken the chance to come this far, and it would be harder than steel to turn his back on Malfoy.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "All right." He settled himself against some pillows at the head of the bed, so at least he wouldn't fall far, and looked up into Malfoy's eyes.  
  
*  
  
Draco swallowed a little, astonished by the amount of trust Potter was showing him. He had thought Potter would let him use Legilimency, but not this willingly, not this easily. He had all sorts of persuasive arguments prepared about why it was the right thing to do. And then Potter just walked up and said, "All right."  
  
 _Potter's like that._ Draco wasn't sure that  _Potter_ would be the one most thrown off-balance by this Legilimency, after all.  
  
He gently knelt down beside Potter and arranged a few pillows, just in case. Then he put his hand under Potter's chin and turned his face towards the light. Potter squinted a little, then nodded.  
  
Draco held his wand up. " _Legilimens_ ," he murmured, never taking his gaze away from that rich green one.  
  
He dived in surprisingly easily, although he thought that might be because Potter had opened his barriers to Draco rather than because he didn't have any. He brushed through memories that involved a fat boy shouting at Potter, and grueling Auror training that made Potter's muscles burn, and a small, cramped place that blared so strongly of both  _punishment_  and  _bedroom_ that Draco was confused, and memories of the last time Snape had used Legilimency on Potter.  
  
Draco turned his back on those. He wanted to show Potter that he wasn't deliberately seeking out experiences that would humiliate him on his venture into his head.  
  
And then he found it, what he was thinking for. The familiar colors of the kitchen and the dining room were around him for a second, and then he reached out and touched the soft, shining bubble that marked recent thoughts.  
  
He darted into Potter's memory of his mind, and as it had been the few other times Draco had done this, it was an exhilarating experience, bounding along a road of connecting thoughts that worked a little like his own did, but not exactly. And then he touched the thought that Potter had had, and gasped as it seemed to whip across his face.  
  
"...Malfoy. Malfoy! Are you all right?"  
  
He was the one who had fallen, as Draco had thought might happen. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the bed and Potter practically having a heart attack above him. He stopped when he saw Draco looking at him, though, and rubbed a hand through his hair in embarrassment.  
  
"Sorry about that," he muttered. "Of course you wouldn't have done it if you didn't have some idea of what to do." He cleared his throat and straightened. "So. Um. What was the thought?"  
  
Draco sat up, using a hand on Potter's forearm to lift himself up. Potter didn't seem to find anything strange about that, although Weasley, if he was still around, might have. Potter simply watched him intently.  
  
Draco had to smile.  _Concerned for me. He let me into his mind. He lets me touch him._  
  
It was soothing to the small part of him, at least, that had never ceased to regret a moment of lost friendship.  
  
But he was able to say, "You thought that something that was  _half-_ real might be able to get past the wards. I say we pursue that thought and see where it takes us."


	12. Intimate Secrets

“It’s a good idea.” Kingsley’s face was thoughtful in the flames. “But I don’t know how we’re to investigate it. There are no experts in the Auror Department on the half-real.” He raised an eyebrow at Harry.  
  
Harry grinned back at him. He knew this was a challenge in some ways, and given how much trouble he’d given Kingsley over arresting Dennis—only to have him turn out not to be a good lead after all—he should have anticipated it. “But you have experts on wards and the way that wards react to external threats.”  
  
Kingsley blinked. “Even though wards haven’t stopped the Bard so far?”  
  
“We haven’t seen any sign that they  _react_ to him so far,” Harry corrected him. “This is the first incident where we have some proof that they do. And the Bard is probably going to try again, soon. If we have some ward experts on the subject, then maybe we have a chance of keeping him out.”  
  
Kingsley nodded slowly. “There are a few…Lowell would probably be glad to have a chance to do something involving active duty right now.”  
  
Harry grimaced a little. Allison Lowell was among the most unpleasant Aurors he had ever met. The hard thing was that she was also devoted to her job, and would throw herself unhesitatingly in front of a curse to save someone she was bodyguarding, or dive down a black hole after a Dark wizard. She would just scratch you with words when you tried to praise her or help her.  
  
But he knew she had been injured in a case a few weeks ago, confined to desk duty, and it would be a kindness to her and the people in her office both to give her some work that actually benefited a case.  
  
And a kindness to the Malfoys, too, as long as she could ignore their past Dark record to apply herself to the ward problem.  
  
“Yes, all right,” Harry said, and Kingsley smiled at him. “Has Hermione come up with anything about that handkerchief she was studying?”  
  
Kingsley shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”  
  
Thinking about it, Harry had to admit that Hermione probably would have contacted him herself if she had. He resigned himself to waiting with a nod, then reached out to shut the Floo connection. But Kingsley spoke before he could.  
  
“There is one thing I wonder if we have to worry about, Harry, and that’s your objectivity.”  
  
Harry stared at Kingsley, and then snorted a little. “Of course I’m not objective. I know that. I want to stop this bastard, and that means I’m involved in the case. But I would make a pretty poor bodyguard for the Malfoys if I weren’t.”  
  
Kingsley gave him a little, tight-lipped, unhappy smile. “I think one thing you should consider, Harry, is whether you’re the right one to do things like question Dennis. Someone less involved, someone who can see both the costs of catching the Bard and the costs of not catching him, might be better.”  
  
Harry smoothed out the disgust from his features, and said pleasantly, “Dennis said I was the only one he would talk to. Who else should I have handed the duty to?”  
  
Kingsley hesitated, then nodded. “But I am concerned the Bard might switch to making a target of you, Harry. I know that’s not the way he usually works, but you’ve thwarted him multiple times now.”  
  
Harry sighed. He was sick of these endless, useless discussions with Kingsley, where it seemed like Kingsley was trying to make him into a political player aware of all the ways that a case could go wrong or someone could escape custody. Harry would have appreciated the warnings if he was working a case where a powerful pure-blood was about to use his money to bribe the Wizengamot, and Harry hadn’t been aware of that because he didn’t keep up with gossip and politics.  
  
But in a case like this, where Harry was already trying his hardest simply to  _solve_ it, it felt like interference. He held Kingsley’s eyes and murmured, “Dennis told me that the Bard feels a great admiration for me. I can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason he broke off his attack on Narcissa Malfoy, because it happened in my house or he realized I was coming. I’m probably safer than any other Auror you could assign to the case right now.”  
  
“Will Lowell be safe, then?”  
  
Harry frowned. Kingsley was backing away from the discussion again, which on the one hand was a good thing, because it meant Harry could do as he needed to capture the Bard without interference, but on the other hand, it meant they hadn’t  _had_ it, and Kingsley might think he could just interfere when he wanted to once more.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “He really  _hasn’t_ varied his pattern so far, or shown any signs of attacking Aurors. Unless Lowell was at the Battle of Hogwarts and fought on Voldemort’s side secretly, then she doesn’t need to worry.”  
  
“She wasn’t there.” Kingsley stretched out one hand. “Harry, I’m  _worried._ I think that you’re falling too far into this and taking unnecessary risks.”  
  
“Because I arrested Dennis?” Harry stared at him incredulously, and then had to laugh. “That’s a little too far even for you, sir.”  
  
“Because you went alone to talk to him first.” Kingsley’s face was drawn. “I don’t think you’re fully considering the consequences of your actions, and I know you haven’t had much sleep lately because you always starve yourself of sleep when it comes to a bodyguard case—”  
  
“I’ll do what I think necessary, yes,” Harry cut in sharply. He was tired of the look in Kingsley’s eyes, tired of being told what to do, tired of almost everything except what would help him catch the Bard. “Will you be sending Lowell over this afternoon, sir?”  
  
Kingsley spent one more moment studying him, and then bowed his head and nodded. “I hope you can accept that what I’m doing, I do out of concern for you, Harry,” he whispered.  
  
“I don’t appreciate the concern when you seem to think that my life is of more consequence than the lives of the people I’m guarding, that’s all,” Harry told him sharply, and then pulled back and out of the Floo call without waiting for an answer. His head was pounding and his throat was dry.  
  
When he was free, he stood up and leaned his head against the fireplace mantel. Honestly, this had been coming for a long time. He feared that there was a time when he would either have to leave the Aurors, or he would have to start investigating whether Kingsley had done things like cover up criminal activity by certain people because it wouldn’t be “politically savvy” to arrest them.  
  
He didn’t want either to happen. He didn’t want either to be true.  
  
“Trying conversation?”  
  
That was Malfoy, behind him. Harry sighed and turned around, nodding. Malfoy took a step towards him at once, eyes up and bright and fastened on his as they had been since Harry let him into his mind to do Legilimency.  
  
 _Malfoy seems to attach a lot of importance to that,_ Harry thought, and decided it was because Malfoy had never expected to have Harry grant him that much of himself. For better or worse, since they were children, Malfoy had wanted his attention, and now he did have it.  
  
“There’ll be an expert on wards coming over,” he told Malfoy, to distract himself from the thoughts of Malfoy’s gentleness, and how it had made him think differently about Legilimency. “Probably this afternoon. She’s hard to work with, but if anyone can tell us about half-real things trying to come through wards, it’s her.”  
  
“Hard to work with because she agrees with the Bard?” Malfoy had folded his arms and was now lounging back against the side of the doorway. Harry sighed a little. Of course it was much better to keep things between a victim and an Auror as professional as possible, and he had been a fool, probably, to let Malfoy into his head to use Legilimency in the first place.   
  
But he had to admit, he missed it a little when Malfoy pulled back like that. He shook his head, though. “Not in that way. She’s simply prickly and snappish, and she hasn’t been working cases lately because of an injury on the job. She’ll have her own ideas, and she’ll want everyone to defer to them.”  
  
A ghost of a smile crossed Malfoy’s face. “I’ve had some practice at that.”  
  
Harry blinked at him a moment, and then remembered Voldemort. And Lucius Malfoy, although he would never say it, especially not now. He nodded. “Reckon you have,” he said, and started to brush past Malfoy and into the kitchen, where they would eat together. Harry preferred neither Narcissa nor Malfoy to leave his sight, not now.  
  
Malfoy caught his arm, between the shoulder and the elbow. Harry stared down at his fingers, mesmerized. They cradled his arm, he thought, the way Malfoy had held his face when he bent over and used the Legilimency on Harry.  
  
 _Great Merlin, I’ve got to stop thinking about that._  
  
“I want you to know,” Malfoy said softly, staring at Harry’s arm—in the spot where a Dark Mark would be if he’d ever borne one, which was creepy—“that I do appreciate what you’ve done for my mother and me. Even if I don’t show it. Even if I am a smug and self-righteous git, sometimes.”  
  
Harry swallowed back several things he could have said. All of them would have been wrong, would have reciprocated Malfoy’s actual reaching-out with a slap back.  
  
Even if things were supposed to stay utterly professional between victim and Auror, Harry already knew it had gone too far in the other direction. Probably his own past history with the Malfoys would have assured that.  
  
“Thanks,” Harry said. “It’s nice to know that someone likes it when I try to do my job.”  
  
It was a way out, and Malfoy took it. He slid his hand off Harry’s arm and fell into step with him as they went towards the kitchen, his eyebrow rising. “Someone dares to tell the Great Harry Potter how to do his job?”  
  
Harry flicked a mild Stinging Hex at him, which Malfoy easily dodged. “It’s more that Kingsley’s worried about me arresting the wrong person, or getting hurt, or all sorts of things which I think come down more to public perception of the Aurors than whether we can manage to capture the Bard. Hell, at this point he might be more worried about the fuss the papers are making than the actual victims.”  
  
Malfoy’s head tilted, and Harry expected him to ask whether Kingsley supported the Bard. But instead, he asked, “Do you think you can do that?”  
  
“What?” Harry kept himself from folding his arms, but he didn’t understand what Malfoy meant, and he  _hated_ not understanding. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“Can you capture him?” Malfoy’s face was as smooth and featureless as a set of porcelain teacups that Aunt Petunia used to keep for Marge. “Or will you try to kill him, instead?”  
  
Harry stared at him for a second. He wondered where the boy who had tried to kill Dumbledore on top of the Astronomy Tower, and hadn’t even been able to raise his wand, had gone. Then he shook his head roughly and grabbed Malfoy’s arm for a second, pulling him close enough that he could whisper into his ear.  
  
“This is the sort of thing that I would normally only tell people who were trying to recover from almost being murdered themselves,” he whispered. “But yes, I will kill him if he’s going after you and your mother, and there’s no other choice.”  
  
He drew back. Malfoy kept hold of his arm as he did, twisting with him, so that he was out and reared up in front of Harry, eyes locked on his.   
  
“I want to remind you that I  _am_ in that position of recovery,” he said. “The attack in the back of Madam Royal’s shop qualifies, if nothing else.”  
  
Harry shook his head and shut his eyes, but not in denial. He should remembered that. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Forgive me. I just—it’s hard to adapt to—”  
  
He cut off his babbling, furious with himself. He would just have to  _adapt_ to what was going on around him in a better way than this. He stepped back and gave a little bow to Malfoy. Malfoy’s eyebrows rose as he considered Harry.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “Of course you fit that profile, and you deserve to be protected as well as anyone else.”  
  
Malfoy’s face was pale and constricted for a second, but he nodded and put out a hand. Harry gingerly accepted it so he could shake it. Then he turned and led the way into the kitchen, where Narcissa was waiting for them with a curious expression. She didn’t say anything, but Harry could see the way that her eyes went back and forth between him and Malfoy, trying hard to understand.  
  
Harry took a seat in the middle of the table and reached determinedly for the breakfast that Molly had sent over, keeping one shoulder turned to Malfoy. He was furious with himself for forgetting, for reacting like a berk to a question that should have been obvious—  
  
And for the promise he had made. He was an Auror. He brought people to justice. He didn’t murder them.  
  
But he also knew that he had struck to kill without hesitation, even if he hadn’t always killed everyone he was aiming at. And those had been times when he had judged that he couldn’t capture the criminal alive, or times when he had known they wouldn’t  _stay_ captured, that he didn’t have adequate spells to catch them or a prison to hold them.  
  
He was prepared to do it again, with the Bard, even if it would leave unanswered questions behind him.  
  
Worse, he didn’t  _know_ if he would have done it for just anyone, or if the Malfoys were special like that.  
  
Malfoy got his attention by leaning forwards to hand him a plate of scones. Harry, because he had to if he was going to live with himself, looked away.  
  
*  
  
Allison Lowell was a loud, noisy, unpleasant person who stood there with her mouth pursed in when she didn’t get her way. Then she would sniff and launch some other demand or question or answer at them. And while she knew a lot about wards, she looked at all the wards on the Black house as though they were beneath her and she wouldn’t use them to guard a chicken coop.  
  
She and Draco got along famously.  
  
The first time she tried to blame him for the shoddy state of the wards, Draco had spread his hands and said, “It wasn’t me, it was Auror Potter here. My cousin, Sirius Black, left him the house, and he hasn’t maintained the wards.”  
  
Lowell turned on Potter after that, and Draco was free to lean back and admire the way she could talk in terms he’d never heard before about wards he’d never heard of before.  
  
And he could admire, too, the way Potter handled it. Despite one intense look of irritation at Draco when he turned Lowell loose on him, Potter had gone on to answer her questions without getting impatient. He had showed her the silver fire that was guaranteed for the protection of Slytherins. Even Lowell paused then, and sounded a little more respectful when she next spoke.  
  
Draco liked that, too. He liked seeing someone else respect Potter, if only because he was  _their_ bodyguard and of course a Malfoy should have the best bodyguard available.  
  
Lowell talked mostly theory at first, but when she learned of their idea that the Bard was a sentient curse, she had nodded and started talking about wards that were meant to reflect particular kinds of spells. Building those in, weaving them around the ordinary wards, was their best bet.  
  
Draco followed her curiously as she went into the dining room where Narcissa had seen the image start to come through. He wondered if she would manage to locate the traces of the Bard there. She had already been all over the house, even in the bedroom where the aborted attack had happened on Narcissa, and complained that there was no evidence.  
  
But when they stepped into the dining room, Lowell lifted her head and began to move in a clipped way, with short strides, staring around and then sniffing as if she could catch a trace of some scent that would alert her to the Bard’s nature after all. She walked over to the corner where Narcissa had seen the image without being told, and stood staring up at it. Then she cast a spell Draco didn’t know, one that made the wards flash.   
  
A sharp tingle sped through Draco’s nerves, and he licked his lips. There was a cool, minty taste in his mouth.  
  
“Yes,” said Lowell. “The Bard was using cold magic. What appeared between the wards was the beginning of an ice spell.”  
  
“Like the one that he killed my father with,” Draco whispered. It made sense to him.  
  
When he turned to Potter, though, he was frowning. Draco opened his mouth to ask a question, but Potter spoke before he could. “The Bard’s never used the same kind of magic to kill twice in a row. It seems strange that he would use cold magic when he’d already used it to kill Lucius Malfoy.”  
  
Draco shrugged, but Lowell was the one who tore into Potter. “If you doubt my conclusions, perhaps  _you_ can spend the ten years studying wards necessary to being here and pursuing this case…”  
  
Potter listened without moving, and then caught Draco’s eye and shrugged. Draco smiled back, a little. He might not know why the Bard had used the same magic twice in a row, but he trusted Lowell’s conclusions.  
  
And that meant they had a clue, however small.


	13. Cold Magic

“I would have appreciated more warning,” said Draco, stepping back from the doorway of the bedroom and turning around with his arms folded.  
  
Potter winced, but kept gazing steadily at Draco, although one hand clenched down at his side as if  _he_ was also bothered. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But the Ministry decided that they couldn’t learn anything more about how your father died from his bedroom. So they told us that we could—that we could have the funeral for him tomorrow.”  
  
Draco nodded, his eyes distant. He doubted Potter had formal mourning-robes, and he and Narcissa hadn’t ordered them from Madam Royal, either. They weren’t the sort of thing you bought on a  _whim_. “Where is the funeral going to be held?” Because of course it would be in some hasty manner, in some Ministry-chosen place, to try and make sure the Bard couldn’t attack.  
  
Potter didn’t respond, so Draco turned impatiently towards him, wondering what he was thinking. He was thinking of Draco with compassion, from the way that he abruptly moved out of the doorway and reached out with one hand to touch Draco’s cheek. Draco stiffened a little and eyed him sideways, only for Potter to make a kind of meaningless, soothing  _hssh_  that sounded like he was trying to calm a horse down.  
  
“The Ministry is going to let you choose the place and the manner in which the funeral takes place,” Potter murmured. “Whatever arrangements he left in your will or told you and your mum will be followed.”  
  
Draco swallowed. “And the Bard?”  
  
“There will be Auror guards all over the funeral.” Potter dropped his hand and stood there looking at Draco, still much closer than he had come before except when he was letting Draco use Legilimency on him. “That’s the one part you don’t get a choice in. It could actually be a way of infuriating the Bard, because after all, people shouldn’t be  _mourning_ a Death Eater.” Potter rolled his eyes. “Or that’s what we’re hoping he’ll think, anyway. If he doesn’t attack in broad daylight with all the Aurors around, then he might have decided not to risk it.”  
  
“You’re hoping he does,” Draco said, although he couldn’t summon up much heat in his voice. “You’re hoping he comes after us.”  
  
“After me,” Potter corrected. “I’ll be wearing a glamour that makes me appear to be you.”  
  
Draco drew back and stared at him. “So the funeral is going to be exactly like my father wanted it to be except that someone else takes the place of his chief mourner?” was the first thing that it occurred to him to ask.  
  
Potter winced. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” he said, and that went some way towards soothing Draco’s irritation, even if it would never make up for everything. “But the Ministry thinks that we have to trick the Bard somehow, that we’ll never catch him simply by running after him and trying to clean up his messes. And what Dennis said about the Bard having a reverence for me actually makes it harder for me to catch him—as myself. My boss suggested this disguise as a means of luring the Bard close and hitting him with everything I have.”  
  
Draco digested that. Then he asked, as quietly as he could even though there were no other Aurors in the house right now, “And you don’t think your boss is on the Bard’s side? At all? There’s no chance of this leaking out?”  
  
Potter blinked very fast for a moment. Draco added, “Only you told me that he was against the arrest of Dennis Creevey, who at the time was the best lead you had.”  
  
“He was against the arrest for a different crime, before I got assigned to the Bard case, for political reasons,” said Potter, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think that he sympathizes enough with the Bard to try and hand me over to him. Kingsley loves the Aurors above all else, and our reputation would be shot to hell if the Bard isn’t caught.”  
  
“All right,” said Draco reluctantly. He hated this feeling that he had to distrust everyone and everything, that anyone who walked into the room and smiled at him might be secretly in league with the Bard, that half the wizarding world hated him and his mum enough to help a murderer get away with it. But if this was the sort of precaution they needed to take, then he’d take it.  
  
Potter smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Now…” He drew his wand and turned to face the mirror in the bathroom. “What do you think of  _this_?”  
  
His wand traced back and forth, trailing magic. Draco leaned forwards in spite of himself. He didn’t often get the chance to be this close to another wizard’s magic for a lengthy period of time. Most often, curses and the like were cast and over before he could react to them, and he knew only his parents’ magic well.  
  
Potter’s magic felt as if it was a stream, a chattering stream flowing over rocks, cold and musical. Draco wanted to drench himself in it, even if he would drown. He wanted to touch Potter and feel the power thrumming through his veins and his wand at the same time.  
  
But he managed to restrain himself, and instead simply watched as Potter’s hair grew shorter and lighter, his face lengthening and turning pale. Draco had to snort, though, when he realized how pointy Potter had made his chin and cheeks.  
  
“I haven’t looked like that in a long time, Potter,” he chided. “Now who’s letting their childhood memories get in the way?”  
  
“That’s not an accusation I ever made to you,” Potter retorted, his ordinary voice bizarre coming from his changed face, and turned around to look at Draco. “And that’s what comes when I try Transfiguration without a model. I’ll need to look at you instead of your reflection while I work. Quiet, now.”  
  
Draco fell silent, not so much in obedience as in awe and wonder at having Potter this close. Yes, there was no doubt that was  _his_ magic, singing constantly away to itself as he leaned in and stared into Draco’s eyes. Draco felt almost as though Potter was the one practicing Legilimency on him.  
  
The fact that he would have let Potter do that, if asked, occurred to him, and he gaped. Potter raised an eyebrow.  
  
“I don’t need to copy your tonsils, Malfoy,” he said, and Draco hastily shut his mouth. “No, a little further open. Your teeth are useful. Yes, thanks.”  
  
Draco let his lips part a little, and looked sternly back at Potter, wondering if it was true that he was the only one affected by this closeness. Maybe Potter Transfigured into other people all the time. Maybe he let them use Legilimency on him all the time, for that matter. It would explain his unusual willingness to go along with Draco when he suggested it.  
  
 _No. No, I know that I’m special, and Potter thinks so._  Draco thought of the way they’d maneuvered around each other yesterday, touched each other, when Lowell was here. That wasn’t a closeness he would have felt with just anyone.  
  
“Almost done,” Potter said soothingly.  
  
Draco realized he was shifting around, and Potter seemed to have mistaken his restlessness for boredom. He went still again, and Potter murmured his approbation as he flicked his wand a final time and stepped back, head cocked.  
  
“There. What do you think?”  
  
“You’ll have to do something about your voice,” Draco murmured, but his eyes were on Potter’s transformed features. Potter had done a really good job, he had to admit, and there were only a few minor changes to the hair color on the underside, near the nape of the neck, where it was harder to see, that he’d need. “And I thought you were going to be wearing a glamour.”  
  
“The Bard can get through magic as simple as that,” Potter said. “Transfiguration is much harder to detect. I don’t plan to talk much, anyway. Just keep near your mother with my head down.”  
  
Draco nodded. Lucius’s will hadn’t called for much in the way of speeches and so on. But he did have to make sure that if Potter was going to take this bloody risk in the first place, that he didn’t ruin it through a simple act of not being able to mimic Draco’s face as a perfect mirror. “Hold still anyway. There are a few pieces of hair that you didn’t manage to get.”  
  
Potter muttered something that sounded like, “Of course it’s the hair,” but Draco didn’t need to understand it, and so he didn’t really try. He stepped behind Potter instead, and carefully lifted his hair from the nape of his neck, letting his fingertips brush a little against Potter’s bare skin, just to see what would happen.  
  
Potter stood utterly still, the stream of his magic ceasing its chatter, and his breath coming a little faster.  
  
 _Ah_.  
  
Draco didn’t even know what exactly he would do with this information, but he was gratified to see that he wasn’t the only one affected. Eyes on Potter, he murmured a simple charm, and the hairs that he’d noticed—not exactly dark, more a wavering color between chestnut and blond—turned pale to match the rest of Potter’s hair. Draco nodded and moved away. “Finished.”  
  
Potter turned around again and smiled at him. Draco snorted. “You still can’t smile like me, even with all the muscles in your face changed.”  
  
“Expressions are harder to master,” said Potter, and shrugged. “I never got top marks in Stealth and Tracking, anyway.”  
  
“What about Disguise?” Draco didn’t mean the words to come out as a whisper, it just sort of happened that way, and Potter tilted his head back to him. Draco watched him, fascinated. Potter wore his skin, but Draco had no trouble in seeing beneath it, and the stream of his magic had begun to chatter again, which was just an extra guarantee.  
  
“I had to work a long time to get good at it,” Potter said. “But I had a lot of motivation.” He tapped the center of his forehead where his scar—wasn’t, currently. “I hate staring. Having a new way to conceal myself from the people who stared every time I left the Ministry was a pretty good motivation.”  
  
“You hate what I’m doing right now?” Because Draco  _knew_ it was staring.  
  
A crimson flush flooded Potter’s assumed face, and for all that Draco knew it was his own face at the moment and Potter would probably blush like he did, it still seemed  _different_. The way his expression had when he didn’t smile with all the right muscles, Draco thought, and leaned nearer to brush his hand one time through Potter’s changed hair.  
  
“What are you doing?” Potter’s voice was low and soft.  
  
“Something I want to,” Draco replied, and stepped back. “Something I haven’t had much of a chance to do in the past few days.” He winked once at Potter and turned his back to face the door. “You should cast the glamour on your voice. I’ll be busy preparing my mourning robes.” Those weren’t the traditional robes left behind at Malfoy Manor, in case the Bard had somehow got access to them. It was a loss. Draco had to admit it was a loss. But he was good with Transfiguration, too.  
  
And it didn’t seem like as much of a loss when he knew that he had left Potter staring at his back, baffled, behind him.  
  
*  
  
 _It’s probably just that Malfoy’s so vain, he wanted a chance to look at himself when it wouldn’t be a reflection in a mirror. That has to be it._  
  
Harry wasn’t proud of the thoughts running through his head as he paraded at the head of a small collection of Aurors, Ministry officials, and former Slytherins through the gardens of Malfoy Manor, Narcissa Malfoy on his arm. Not far behind him walked Malfoy himself, in a hooded robe. Since he wasn’t the only one here hiding his face—Harry more than suspected that a few former Death Eaters who had fled the country had dared to come back—no one had noticed.  
  
Harry’s back itched at the thought of criminals walking around freely, but he had more important things to do right now than jeopardize his mission by trying to arrest them. For now, he took notice of the voices that murmured condolences to him, and tried to watch for scars and other distinguishing marks on the backs of hands that shook his, and watched mannerisms as people walked away from him.  
  
Lucius had wanted to be laid to rest in a large white building that Harry would actually have thought was a cool place to sit in the summer, not a tomb. It had an open, pillared portico all the way around it, and it was made of white marble and had some chairs here and there in front of the doors. When Harry got closer, though, he could see the inscriptions about death and peace and long rest in the stone.  
  
Narcissa’s fingers tightened on his arm for a second, the signal that he should step back and let her take the lead. Harry did that very willingly. He knew he would mess something up if he tried to pretend to be Malfoy in intimate circumstances, and he didn’t want to mess this up for the  _real_ Malfoys.  
  
Narcissa stood there with her head turning back and forth, sweeping over the crowd but not looking directly at anyone, until the procession quieted. Then she turned and laid her hand, for the first time, on the floating coffin beside her that contained nothing except bedsheets. Harry felt an unexpected pang, seeing that, if only because Narcissa’s face was so quiet. He knew she would probably only let herself mourn in private.  
  
“My husband was the victim of a killer who has taken numerous other lives,” Narcissa said, and her voice sounded tired. “He had served his sentence in Azkaban for his crimes and returned to his family. It is—a grief that he should not have had the chance to live out his life with us.” For a second, her hand tightened on the coffin.  
  
Harry nodded. That was the main reason he wanted to catch the Bard. He pretended to justice while feeling no sense of it. He killed people who had served their sentences and run away from the Aurors and were still being investigated alike. He thought  _he_ was justice, and the arrogance of it made Harry want to boil over.  
  
“But I know that he would want my son and I to continue on, and the world that he wanted to be part of to do so as well.” Narcissa looked up, and met Harry’s eyes for exactly twice as long as she met the eyes of her concealed son. Harry found himself counting heartbeats, and then telling himself that was ridiculous. But he had done it anyway. Then Narcissa was facing the coffin again, and she took a white flower out of her pocket and laid it top of the wood. “May he rest in comfort.”  
  
The flower was a narcissus, Harry thought. He moved forwards and deposited his own handful of soft earth from the gardens on top of the coffins. No one could see it, but Malfoy held another handful concealed in his own fist, which he added after waiting for several other guests to come forwards with flowers, or chips of stone, or in the case of one Ministry flunkey, a golden bird that jerked and sang a little.  
  
 _I think that they would expect me to look away about now,_ Harry thought, and he turned and scanned the gardens as if looking at the coffin any longer would overwhelm him. His eyes passed over bowed heads and blowing hair, hoods and averted faces, and then locked onto a shimmer at the far edge of the crowd.  
  
It could have been someone using a Disillusionment Charm, but Harry didn’t think so. It looked, sort of, like the shine of the ice that had been left in Lucius’s bedroom. Harry moved politely out of the way of another guest coming up to the coffin and faced the shimmer with his wand in his hand.  
  
The shimmer paused, eddied back and forth, and then suddenly breezed forwards and dived at him.  
  
To the other guests, it must have looked like a blowing haze, or a heat shimmer. But Harry was in the middle of that magic so suddenly that he had no time to raise a Shield Charm, and he was choking. Ice particles blew into his lungs. Hands grabbed him, but he couldn’t see them. Harry turned to the side and flung himself backwards, sharply, in a motion that should break the grasp of anyone under an Invisibility Cloak.  
  
But it didn’t. The grip moved with him instead, and something like a pair of lips locked onto his, exhaling the ice harder and harder into his chest.  
  
 _Dementor, really strange spell, someone who has Auror training,_ Harry’s brain chattered, even as his body started panicking because he couldn’t breathe and he heard distant screaming. He jerked his way free, and for a moment the lips moved with him, for a moment Harry thought he even caught a glimpse of the edge of a cheek—  
  
Then it was gone, and the force was gone, and Harry had a lot of screaming to listen to and a lot of questions to answer.  
  
But he was sure of one thing, now. The Bard hadn’t left on his own. He had probably sensed that he wasn’t targeting the right Malfoy, and broken off the attack for the same reasons that he had before.   
  
 _Either the Bard is incredibly clever at Transfiguration and able to see beneath it,_ Harry thought, as he nodded and gasped and played the part of a scared Malfoy well enough to pass muster until Narcissa was able to intervene and tell them he needed air.   
  
From beneath her shielding arm, his eyes scanned the crowd again.  
  
 _Or we have a traitor on our hands._


	14. Revelation

“They’re going to do  _what_?”  
  
“Sorry, mate.” Ron was almost cringing back from him in the fire, which reminded Harry that he was placing the blame on the wrong person. Ron was just the messenger. Unfortunately, the real culprits would be out of their offices in the Ministry by now, it was so late at night, and Harry didn’t know the names of their houses on the Floo network. “I don’t think it’s the right decision, but like they listen to me.”  
  
“They should,” Harry snapped, leaning back on the hearth and shaking his head. “You’ve been right lots of times when someone else couldn’t see what was in front of their nose. And that person was me often enough.” He owed Ron his life several times over, and Ron owed his to Harry, probably as many times, but it wasn’t something they talked about.  
  
Ron’s face went a little pink. “Thanks, mate. But that doesn’t tell me what you’re going to do about  _them_.” He paused and gave Harry a significant look.  
  
“I’m going to stay here and keep working the case until they pull me off,” said Harry grimly. “ _Officially_ pull me off, not just mouth these mealy words about how my life is in danger and someone else could do a better job of guarding the Malfoys while I’m in the field.” Saying the words made him feel sick.  
  
“I think it’s political as much as it is anything else,” Ron muttered, but when Harry started to open his mouth and say he  _knew_ and that was what sickened him about it, Ron added hastily, “But I also think that Kingsley’s really worried about you. Even when you were disguised as Malfoy, the Bard still attacked.”  
  
“And how many people knew I wasn’t Malfoy?” Harry asked quietly. “Only the Malfoys and the Aurors at the funeral. I don’t think the Bard would have attacked me at all if he had magic that could just find its way through the Transfiguration. He would have attacked the real Malfoy.”  
  
Ron made a rude noise. He wasn’t a fan of Harry’s theory that an Auror had betrayed their ruse to the Bard. “If someone had told him, then why’d he attack at all? Your theory makes no sense.”  
  
“I think he came to see if I was Malfoy or not,” Harry said softly. Admittedly, he hadn’t caught much of a glimpse of the Bard’s face, but he didn’t think it had been twisted in anger and hatred. “To see for himself, and then backed off from the attack. That attack was different from all the others. It happened in front of a bunch of potential witnesses, and I know he wasn’t using some of the magic that he has in the other attacks. I wasn’t even really defending myself, but he backed off.”  
  
Dennis’s words rang in Harry’s head.  _Muggleborns who hero-worship me._ The Bard might not have been able to bring himself to kill Harry because that hero-worship was so strong in him. But he’d had to attack and see for himself, or work some kind of spell that would only let him peer beneath the Transfiguration after the attack had already begun.  
  
“It still doesn’t make sense that someone would have told him the truth and he would have attacked you anyway,” Ron said stubbornly. “It has to be something else.”  
  
With a sigh, Harry let it go. It was true that someone who was a traitor in the Ministry, if they had power at all, would have been eager to keep Harry on the case so the Bard could try killing him again, not remove him from it.  
  
 _Unless they think that with me gone, the Bard has the best chance of killing the Malfoys._  
  
Harry felt a headache forming behind his eyes. They had too few clues, too many possible theories about what could have happened. As bloody  _usual_ with the Bard, he thought bitterly. The bastard wouldn’t stay put and let himself be sealed into a neat little theory-box. Not that Harry could have hoped he would, but he had hoped anyway.  
  
“I’m sorry, mate,” Ron offered. “I don’t think they’ll try and pull you off the case for a few days, anyway.”  
  
“Thanks for the advance warning,” Harry said tiredly. He knew that Ron had probably been allowed to give it to him; Kingsley wouldn’t want to anger Harry by springing a surprise like that on him. “But it’s bollocks. My job really is protecting the Malfoys, not hunting around for clues on the Bard.”  
  
“I thought it was both.”  
  
Harry gave him a tired smile. “I’m trying to do both, but if it comes down to it, I’m always going to put protecting the Malfoys first.”  
  
*  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows and leaned slowly back from the doorway of the drawing room, where he’d stood to listen to Potter argue with Weasley. At first, his thoughts had been consumed with bitterness. It wasn’t enough that his father was dead. Now someone wanted to take away the only Auror who had really protected them because of political shit, or because Draco and his mother weren’t dying fast enough to suit the Muggleborn fanatics.  
  
But then he had started to listen to the rest of the conversation, and he had been a little humbled, a little awed, by how much Potter wanted to stay by their sides and defend them.  
  
And a little thrilled.  
  
Draco shook his head sharply. He wasn’t about to tumble into the panting position of Potter’s number-one fan, at least not yet. He would have to talk with him about it, though. If Potter refused to go and the Ministry insisted that he do exactly that, they might find themselves in a very awkward position very fast. Or at least another Auror would have to move into Potter’s house, and Draco didn’t think his mother would like that any more than he did.  
  
 _But it might not happen. I’ll talk with Potter about it calmly._  
  
Potter came stalking out of the drawing room shortly after, his face dark enough that Draco was reminded for a moment of the way he had looked at the funeral right after the Bard got away. He said nothing, but fell into step beside Potter.  
  
For a moment, Potter paused as though Draco’s presence was disturbing him, but he shook his head a second later, and went on stalking down the corridor. “You heard most of that, I assume,” he mumbled.  
  
Draco had to smile. It might not be done for a perfect, righteous Gryffindor to suspect the motives of potential victims he was guarding, but of course Potter knew Draco pretty well.  
  
“Of course I did,” he said. “And I don’t particularly want anyone else guarding my mother and me. Apart from the danger factor, we might have to be suspicious of their motives in asking for the job.”  
  
Potter exhaled hard and leaned against the wall for a second, staring at the other one. Draco looked, but saw nothing more interesting than an empty portrait frame. Potter had told him that a number of Draco’s Black ancestors had left their portraits when Potter moved into the house, refusing to stay in a property owned by a “filthy half-blood.”  
  
“I don’t understand it,” Potter whispered. “Dennis and his people have never resorted to murder, because they understood that it would destroy their own political goals in the long run. But the Bard is connected with the Muggleborn Legion somehow. I think Dennis  _did_ know him, and I just didn’t ask the right questions. I think…” He pulled a strand of hair through his fingers sharply, frowning. “Either he’s someone crazy, or he has some goal with these killings that I don’t understand.”  
  
“How could someone that crazy pull off such complex magic, though?” Draco asked, voicing one of his own prime doubts. “He would have had to have assistants, but no one has betrayed him, even for the hefty reward the Ministry offers.”  
  
“Or perhaps he’s a sentient spell, and none of what I’ve been saying even matters.” Potter threw up his hands. “That’s the only problem with the abundance of theories on this case. There’s no way to be sure! Even narrowing him down to someone who was at the Battle of Hogwarts doesn’t tell us who might have cast a spell that went sentient. Merlin, sometimes I could wish Hermione hadn’t suggested that theory,” he muttered.  
  
Draco put a hand on Potter’s shoulder, and made him stop muttering and look at him. “You seem frustrated,” he murmured. “You aren’t going to come up with the right answer by standing here and screaming in frustration. Come on. Let’s go into the kitchen, and sit down and have something to eat, and pool our knowledge, what we know about the Bard for certain.”  
  
Potter hesitated once, then nodded. “All right. Thanks, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco nodded back and began to move towards the kitchen, not bothering to take his hand off Potter’s shoulder, so Potter was drawn along with him. Potter  _did_ clear his throat after a moment. “Er, Malfoy, you can let go of me now.”  
  
“Maybe I could,” Draco agreed easily. “But I don’t want to.”  
  
He counted three beats of silence, then looked over his shoulder.  
  
Potter was staring at him with the perfect mixture of shock and something else, his jaw hanging open. He swallowed and closed it hastily when he saw Draco watching him, but he nodded and looked away.  
  
He also didn’t make any attempt to remove his shoulder from Draco’s grip.  
  
Draco smiled and went on walking. It seemed they were creating some understandings that would survive after all, even if another Auror was assigned to guard his mother and him.  
  
*  
  
“We know that he was at the Battle of Hogwarts,” said Malfoy, and made a notation on the growing list in front of him.  
  
Harry sighed and jogged the plate of bread in front of him. Molly had brought over more food before he could ask Kreacher to cook for them, and hadn’t stayed. She had simply taken a look at his face, hugged him fiercely, and murmured into his ear, “You’ll catch him. I have faith in you, Harry.”  
  
 _It’s good that someone does,_ Harry thought, and then looked across the table at Malfoy and changed his opinion.  _Or two people do._  
  
Malfoy took another sip of his own tea and said, without looking up from the list, “Yes, it’s possible that he’s only killing people who were at the Battle of Hogwarts and wasn’t there himself. But we have to cut down the possibilities and see where the remaining ones intersect, for now. We’ll try a different set of possibilities if this one doesn’t produce any answers. Besides, he’s scarily accurate. I don’t think that he could have been absent from the battle and then asked questions later without betraying himself to someone who would have betrayed him in turn.”  
  
That was at least a rational reason for cutting some of their theories out of the picture, Harry thought hopefully. He leaned forwards again. “What do you think about the possibility of a sentient spell?”  
  
“It’s a clever thought,” said Malfoy, in a neutral voice. “But so far, we haven’t seen any evidence in support of it.”  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes at him. “If you’d come up with it, or even if I had, you might be all over it. You only don’t want to acknowledge that it’s clever because it’s Hermione.”  
  
“I just said that I think it’s clever.” Malfoy looked back at him, unblinking. “But it has no evidence.”  
  
“The Bard can come through the wards,” Harry said, and began to count things off on his fingers. “The Bard can be half-real at moments when he is. The Bard can attack with an amazing variety of magic, although he’s used ice magic the last few times—”  
  
“Why would a curse specifically pick ice magic?” Malfoy interrupted. “We aren’t associated with ice, it isn’t our symbol, my father wasn’t known for killing people with ice curses. The sentient spells  _I’ve_ read about are tailored to provide poetic justice. But what’s the reason for this?”  
  
Harry shook his head wearily. “We know that he can use sympathetic magic of some sort to get inside the wards,” he said. “Or artifacts that are associated with his victims.” He hesitated, because that wouldn’t explain the attack at Madam Royal’s robe shop, and slowly adjusted his thinking. “Or perhaps he can  _ride_ them…”  
  
“What?” Malfoy looked up sharply.  
  
“I was wondering about the robe shop,” Harry said. He had the insight now, and he didn’t think he would lose it this time and have to have Malfoy turn to Legilimency to get it out of him. He could see the path of logic unfolding ahead of him, rolling down into a long road. “You didn’t have anything with you that day that you’d brought into the house out of the Manor, since you’d sent all your clothes back and you were wearing the ones you’d Transfigured.”  
  
“Our wands?” Malfoy offered tensely. He was leaning forwards with his eyes on Harry’s face, as if he was fearful of disturbing his train of thought.  
  
“That still wouldn’t answer the question of how the Bard got through the wards in the first place,” Harry pointed out. “He had to have a link. But say it was your wands. How would he go where they were? Maybe he can actually attach a small part of himself to them, a piece of hair or whatever it is that lets him get through the wards in the first place. A part of his magic? So he can ride them.”  
  
Malfoy whistled, long and low. “That’s an idea I’ve heard in a few elf stories, Potter. Not in magical theory.”  
  
“But it would explain so much, wouldn’t it?” Harry demanded. He didn’t want to let go of the idea, because it made so much  _sense_. “How he could follow you into Grimmauld Place, for one thing. He just had to attach part of his magic to the clothes or something else you brought along from the Manor, and then he could attach it to something else once he’d been pulled through the wards here. Then the wards on Madam Royal’s shop couldn’t keep him out, either.”  
  
“But…” said Malfoy.  
  
Harry focused on him, as intently as Malfoy had looked at him, because he knew Malfoy was at least intrigued by the idea, and hadn’t come up with one that could destroy it completely in turn. “Yes?”  
  
“It still doesn’t answer the question of how he got through the wards at the Manor in the first place.” Harry started to open his mouth, and Malfoy held up a hand. “Or the wards at the other places where he attacked the other Death Eaters, I know that, but I’m trying to explain just about the Manor for right now. We’d had no visitors since before at least  _three_ of the other murders. We’d had no owl deliveries he could have used. If he’s proceeding along a chain of sorts, setting things up so that one murder allows him to get through the next victim’s wards, then how was he able to get access to the Manor?”  
  
Harry sighed. That was true. And then there was the fact that someone or something that was already inside the wards wouldn’t have had to push the half-real ball of ice that Narcissa had seen  _through_ the wards, either. “I understand what you’re saying.”  
  
“Maybe,” Malfoy said, suddenly enough that Harry jumped, “he isn’t proceeding the way you think he is. Not just a random object, but one  _kind_ of object. Was there one particular kind of object at all the murder and attack scenes?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Wands. Nothing else. You’d think we wouldn’t have noticed by now if there was?”  
  
“I’m not talking about specific objects,” Malfoy snapped. “Not something like, oh, crow feathers. But feathers in general. What did we bring from the Manor?” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “Our wands, clothes, the shawl he used to try and strangle my mother, photographs of my father—”  
  
Harry slammed his hand down on the kitchen table. “The photograph of her daughter that Madam Royal had in her shop!”  
  
And, with an awful, gut-twisting howl, a cold wind blew straight at Harry.  
  
Harry was already moving, prepared, this time, in a way that he hadn’t been at Lucius’s funeral by the discussion and the fact that he’d failed in the last attack. His magic spread out in a Fire Shield Charm, a specialized version of  _Protego_ that used flames as the spinning center and edges of the wheel, and consumed anything that came between them. Harry thought it should be adept at countering the Bard’s cold magic.  
  
He felt something heavy hit the edge of the shield. He struggled for a second, trying to see the Disillusionment Charm that shielded the Bard, and then the weight was gone as if it had never existed. Harry cursed, and rolled, trying to spread the fire shield so that it covered Malfoy as well. Was this more of the half-real shit?  
  
Malfoy shouted a charm that Harry wasn’t about to admit he knew, a Dark revealing one that was supposed to show the innermost secrets of hearts along with quite a few other things. Harry bit his lip sharply so he didn’t start babbling out inner truths, and stared up.  
  
There was a shimmer in the middle of the air, and for a moment, Harry saw the Bard, the glittering face, the haunted and staring eyes, before Malfoy lost his grip on the magic—probably in astonishment—and it blew away again, with another howl accompanying it.  
  
Harry lay on the floor, stunned, staring up, his heart pounding so hard that he had to have Malfoy’s help to get to his feet again. When he could, he collapsed into a chair and put his head in his hands.  
  
No wonder the wards hadn’t kept him out. No wonder he had seemed half-real. No wonder he could travel through photographs.  
  
The Bard of Morning’s Hope was a ghost.  
  
The ghost of Colin Creevey.


	15. Backlash

“I can still recognize people,” Draco remarked, after long enough that he thought Potter might only sit on his chair, a frozen statue, forever, if Draco didn’t say something. “That was Creevey, right? The one who died in the battle?”  
  
He hadn’t known Creevey well. No reason they should, when he was in a different House, younger, Muggleborn, and on the opposite side of the war. But Draco had seen that face a few times behind a camera, and he had seen it among the dead after the battle. It had leaped out at him in a flash, because Creevey was one of the youngest who had died.  
  
Potter’s head finally moved in a small nod, and he slung his hands out and looked at them for a second as if he had no idea what to do. Then he sat up and turned with a long noise like a boiling kettle to face Draco.  
  
“His spirit must have wanted revenge,” he muttered. “I don’t know how it got that way. That’s not Colin. But—”  
  
“People change when they become ghosts,” Draco suggested quietly. “The Bloody Baron isn’t the same man he was when he was alive, even if he was unnerving when he was alive, too. And who knows? Perhaps the injustice of Creevey’s death was so great that his spirit couldn’t rest, and that’s why he rose.”  
  
Potter hesitated for long enough that Draco had to take his shoulder and shake him a little. “Potter,” he said. “You know that we have to deal with this. We have to  _do_ something about this. If he’s the Bard of Morning’s Hope, then we need to bring him down and stop him. Obviously not the same way that we would with a mortal criminal, but something needs to be done.”  
  
“ _We_?” That proved Potter’s mouth could move in an expression other than a frozen cry of distress. Draco smiled in relief. “Since when did you become an Auror, Malfoy?”  
  
“Since the real Aurors froze up and stopped doing their job,” Draco replied crisply, and poked Potter in the chest when he didn’t respond. “Well? Are you going to help me with Creevey, or not?”  
  
“I don’t see how I can do that, when he’s not here,” Potter muttered. But at least he was stirring and acting somewhat like himself again. His hands were unfolding with a long creak and crack of tendons. “I—you’re right. We need to think about what’s going to happen when we tell the others that it’s Colin.”  
  
“Ghosts can be bound,” said Draco thoughtfully. “Made harmless.” He hesitated. “You think his brother knew?”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, looking into the distance as if he was watching Creevey die again and again. “Or he knew  _something_ , at any rate. I could tell that. I just couldn’t ask the right questions.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “That was why he didn’t want any other Aurors there. Someone else might have managed to ask the right question and find out what he was hiding.”  
  
“Stop beating yourself up,” Draco ordered. He didn’t  _know_ that was what Potter was doing, but he was fairly certain. “So you didn’t find out what he was hiding. That doesn’t make you evil. No one else so much as suspected the Bard was a ghost, either.” He tapped Potter’s shoulder. “So we need to move on and ask this Dennis some more questions. About whether he’s tried to bind his brother already, for example.”  
  
Potter’s eyes were coming back to normal. He nodded. “You’re right. And we need to see if we can soothe his desire for vengeance, or not.” He shrugged. “I didn’t think of ghosts partially because all the ones I’ve known were either good-natured or at least not interested in harming the living. Moaning Myrtle maybe being an exception, but she was exorcised.”  
  
“She could be sympathetic,” Draco muttered, and then flushed as Potter looked at him. But Potter smiled a little and nodded, and Draco didn’t have to feel careless for bringing up that scene in the bathroom they  _both_ would have tried hard to forget.  
  
“All right. Maybe there’s a way we can get through to Colin as well, then. Merlin, I hope so,” Potter muttered, and pulled himself up from his chair.  
  
Draco hesitated once, but he needed to know. He reached out a hand and brushed it once against Potter’s shoulder. Only Potter turned, and Draco’s hand was resting more on his collarbone. It made Potter blink and go still, staring at him.  
  
Draco cleared his throat, trying not to think about how awkward he sounded. “You know that we have to stop him?” he asked quietly. “It’s hard to destroy a ghost, and it’s usually not necessary, but it can be done. And I’ll see the Bard destroyed before I live in fear for the rest of my life because of him.”  
  
Potter’s face was shadowed, but after a moment, he nodded. “I know that,” he said. “And it’s for the best, honestly. What sort of life—existence—whatever you want to call it—is it for Colin, if he spends the rest of it drifting around and feeling compelled to attack people?”  
  
That confirmed Draco’s guess that Potter had a dangerous level of sympathy for the murderer now that he knew who it was, but he only nodded and let it go. For now, there was nothing to be gained by disagreeing with Potter, or protesting that at least the Bard still  _existed,_ while his victims didn’t have that dignity.  
  
In important things, he thought, he and Potter were on the same side. Time enough to find out whether that was going to be true for the whole of the case.  
  
*  
  
“Merlin’s  _pants_.” Ron was so pale that Harry would have taken him to hospital at once if he had passed him in the corridor at work and seen him like that. A second later, he shuddered and covered his face with one hand. “Poor Colin,” he whispered.  
  
Narcissa shifted the shawl on her shoulders and glanced away. Malfoy only leaned on the wall and stared at nothing. Harry had insisted that both of them come with him to the Auror Department while he informed Ron. Colin’s attack had proven that he was still in the house, and he could lurk behind the wards and listen to them. Harry wasn’t going to leave them alone and come back to two more slaughtered victims.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and nodded to Ron when he thought Ron was capable of listening. “But in the meantime, I need to talk to Dennis. I need to find out how much he knew about this and whether he ever realized that the Bard was his brother’s ghost.” He fell silent, going over the questions he had asked Dennis in his head again. How could there be a way for Dennis to know and yet evade the Veritaserum?  
  
Then Harry groaned and let his head fall forwards.  _Of course._ He had asked if Dennis knew who the Bard was. He hadn’t asked if Dennis  _suspected_ who the Bard was. If Dennis had only caught glimpses of a transparent face at times, the way Harry had during the last two attacks before Malfoy’s spell forced Colin to become visible, then he could easily have suspected the truth but never known it for sure.  
  
“Why is Dennis so important, though?” Ron looked at him as if he was mad when Harry stood up. “Colin’s the one we’ve got to find a way to stop.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry agreed heavily. “But I have to know if Dennis ever tried to bind his brother at all, or if he’s still running around causing trouble completely unbound. And I have to know if he did anything to aid him.” He looked Ron in the eye. “You know that the public, the bits of it that don’t sympathize with the Bard, is going to demand an arrest. We can arrest Dennis, if not anyone else.”  
  
“ _I_ will demand an arrest, among other things,” Narcissa Malfoy murmured, voice shockingly cold. “Why would you let someone who may have helped my husband’s murderer walk free?”  
  
“Because we need to determine how much he actually helped him and how much he knew,” Ron explained. Harry was impressed with the neutral tone of his voice, and how he nodded at Harry significantly a moment later. “Harry was the one who took Dennis’s original confession, for what it was worth, so he’ll be the one to find out whether he was telling the truth or lying.”  
  
“We can still make sure that Dennis is arrested, even if he doesn’t know enough about the Bard to provide a good reason,” Harry added reassuringly, when Narcissa’s face turned towards him, blank as a lighted mirror. “He committed other crimes that I’d traced to him. So we can keep holding him.”  
  
“You know Kingsley won’t let you—”  
  
 _So Ron is more tactful than I thought, but still not as tactful as I_ need  _him to be,_ Harry thought, and shot Ron an eloquent look that at least shut him up. He was still scowling at Harry, though. Harry sniffed a little and turned away so he could look Narcissa, and then Malfoy, in the eye.  
  
“We’ll hold him,” he said. “One way or another, we’ll hold him.”  
  
Malfoy was the first to nod at him, while Narcissa still looked as though she’d like to sink her teeth into something and grip it. “I trust you, Potter,” Malfoy said, his voice making the speech as intimate as Dennis’s confession. “You’ll pull what you can from him.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “Exactly.” Then he turned to Ron. “I need you to stay here and guard the Malfoys while I interview Dennis.”  
  
“No,” said Malfoy, so peacefully that he didn’t even have to explain his intentions, which made his next words so much wasted breath, as far as Harry was concerned. “I’m coming with you to see this man.”  
  
“You know,” Harry said, with all the tact that  _he_ was personally capable of at the moment, “it doesn’t actually help our case if you murder Dennis before we can bring in the Bard, or convince Kingsley and the others who were about to pull me off the case that we know who the Bard  _is._ You do something to Dennis, and the others will immediately put it down to not only vengeance but him not having anything to do with the real Bard. After all, he’s been questioned under Veritaserum, hasn’t he?”  
  
Malfoy held his eyes.  
  
Harry looked back at him and shook his head a little. “I’m not saying what  _I_ believe,” he said. “I’m seeing it through  _their_ eyes.”  
  
“Well, stop,” said Malfoy irritably. “It’s disturbing.” But he did turn and nod to Ron. “My mother and I will accompany Potter.”  
  
“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Ron muttered, and glanced at Harry, but Harry had already known he was going to lose this battle. He suspected the hardest thing would be to keep either of the Malfoys from trying to murder Dennis. But he could do that, while he wasn’t equal to try and make them stay here. His heart and head were full of tumbling pain. He waved a hand at Ron.  
  
“If you try to hurt Dennis, then I’ll kick you out of the room and cast a spell on you that makes your hair turn brittle and fall out,” he told Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy gave him a wondering stare, then snorted and said, “I’m not going to try and hurt him, Potter. I want to see what he has to say for himself, and that rather precludes breaking his jaw or something of the sort, since he wouldn’t be able to talk then.”  
  
Harry shrugged in accordance and turned for the door. Malfoy came up beside him and rested a restraining hand on his shoulder, squeezing a little.   
  
“My second reason is to make sure that he doesn’t hurt  _you_ ,” he said, and then Harry had to walk down the corridor in silence because he had nothing to say.  
  
*  
  
Dennis Creevey didn’t look dangerous enough to be the leader of the Muggleborn Legion that supposedly wanted to eliminate all pure-bloods, Draco thought as they came into the room. He sat in the chair in his cell with his hands clasped in his lap and his gaze fixed on the far wall. When he turned to face Potter, his glance softened.  
  
Then it fell on Draco and his mother, and Draco saw where the danger came from.  
  
Creevey straightened in his seat, and his hand made a gesture that Draco didn’t know well but could recognize thanks to his time among the Death Eaters. Creevey didn’t act as if he was reaching for a wand that wasn’t there. He looked as if he was reaching for a  _weapon_ , as if he wanted a knife to cut Draco and his mother open, the way that Draco had sometimes seen Death Eaters like Bellatrix Lestrange do to prisoners.  
  
Draco’s sympathy, if he had any, died. There was only curiosity left. It was a good thing Potter was here, so Creevey would get the sympathy he probably needed, but Draco wouldn’t offer it.  
  
He stayed near the door with his mother while Potter stepped up to Creevey and said softly, “He can’t get in here, can he? No photographs.”  
  
Creevey flinched as though hit by a body-blow. Then he straightened up, and he wasn’t going to make any more disturbing gestures at Draco and his mother, Draco thought, because all his attention had gone to Potter as if  _they_  no longer existed.   
  
“So you know,” said Creevey.   
  
“I know,” Potter agreed. “And I want to know the answer to my question.”  
  
“Photographs are his gate,” said Creevey. “He can go anywhere that one of them has been, as long as it once had a connection to another place he’s appeared, or to him. So he couldn’t have gone into your house simply because you had photographs on the walls, but if you had one that he took or if someone brought one from a different house where he’d killed…yes.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes. There was such weariness in his face that Draco wondered if Creevey would have pity for him, but he only met Potter’s weariness with his own and refused to look as if he was moved.  
  
“He’s my brother,” Creevey whispered. “I couldn’t have betrayed him. I couldn’t have destroyed him. I wasn’t even sure that I saw him most of the time, or if it was just my grief and my hope bringing him back.  _You_ understand, Harry. You have to, when you lost so many people in the war.”  
  
Draco could have told Creevey that that was the wrong kind of appeal. Potter would sympathize with a lot of people about a lot of things, but he wouldn’t let them off because of what  _he’d_ felt that wasn’t sympathy.  
  
“I know how you feel about him,” said Potter. “And being uncertain about him is understandable. I felt uncertain even right after I saw him.” He leaned slightly forwards. “You must not have known it was him for sure, or you would have told me during the Veritaserum interrogation.”  
  
Creevey nodded at once. “That’s right. I had my suspicions, but nothing else.”  
  
Potter’s hand closed on the back of the chair he stood behind, although so low down that Draco didn’t think Creevey could see it. “But the thing I want to know now is why you agreed to the Veritaserum interrogation in the first place.”  
  
Creevey blinked, and blinked again. Draco turned so that his attention was more on Potter than Creevey. For that matter, he wanted to know why Potter had asked that question himself.  
  
If he felt those stares, Potter was obviously not going to let it disconcert him. He watched Creevey, as patient as a lizard.  
  
Finally, Creevey said, “I wanted to show that I wasn’t the Bard, and my people weren’t either.”  
  
“But you chose your answers so carefully, and you had to come near to fighting the Veritaserum a couple of times,” Potter murmured, his voice low, careful, vicious. “I think you did it to throw suspicion completely off  _any_ connection with you, so that for some reason, if I’d begun to think of Colin, I wouldn’t continue down that path.”  
  
Creevey looked at him with narrow eyes. Considering eyes, Draco thought. He had believed Creevey was frightened, if only of them knowing the truth, when he first came into the room, but he no longer believed it. “And?” Creevey asked, in a low voice.   
  
“I thought—when I found out it was Colin, I could see why you wanted to keep it a secret,” said Potter. “But then I thought of your answers, and I knew.” He paused, took a breath, asked another question. “Did you try to bind him or turn him away from his targets? Or warn anyone of how he could get through the photographs?”  
  
“I didn’t know for sure it was him.”  
  
“But you suspected.”  
  
“You know I suspected.”  
  
“Did you try to stop him?”  
  
“How could I?” Creevey tightened his hands on the arms of his chair suddenly. “There were a few days when I thought I felt him nearby, the way I used to feel him on the edge of a conversation. He was shyer than you knew. He would just listen when people were talking, except around you. I think he was there, listening to the plans we made for dealing with the pure-bloods, but I didn’t look around. I thought—I thought, if he was there, if I wasn’t just going mad, that he deserved his revenge.”  
  
Potter closed his eyes. Then he nodded once. “On people who didn’t kill him,” he said. “Even if he killed the person who did cast the curse that murdered him, he also murdered a whole lot of others who had nothing to do with it.”  
  
“Death Eaters!”  
  
“Some of who had served their sentences!” Potter yelled back, in a voice that made Creevey rock backwards. “I thought—I thought, Dennis, that you actually—that you believed in some sort of justice, that that was what you wanted with the Muggleborn Legion. But you don’t care if it’s mindless revenge, do you, as long as it’s Muggleborns killing pure-bloods and not the other way around?” He turned his back slowly and walked back towards the door. “All right. Ask your questions, Malfoy. I don’t care anymore.”  
  
Creevey was staring at Potter’s back, and he shook his head. “Harry,” he called.  
  
He might have ceased to exist. Potter stood beside Draco’s mother, his arms folded and his head facing the other way. Draco couldn’t begin to guess what had happened between them, why it mattered when Potter had already arrested Creevey and had suspected him of being a criminal for a long time, but it obviously did matter.  
  
And seeing that, Draco decided that he didn’t have any questions to ask. Creevey both wouldn’t tell them the truth even if he had lied to Potter, and had already received his punishment.  
  
“Let’s go,” Draco told Potter.  
  
Potter’s eyes flashed towards him, still avoiding Creevey’s face, and he blinked. Draco nodded, and made his expression as gentle as he could. Potter hesitated once, then shrugged and stood straight, and accompanied Draco and his mother out of the room. Creevey’s calls from behind them went ignored.  
  
Draco didn’t think he had words to explain how much of his desire to leave came from knowing they would learn nothing more, and how much came from the hurt done to Potter. He only knew that his mother didn’t complain, so she either was satisfied or didn’t think Creevey would answer them.  
  
And he knew that when he put his hand out and squeezed Potter’s shoulder once, Potter looked at him and nodded, and that was enough.


	16. Awakening Answers

“I never would have suspected something like this.” Kingsley’s voice was numb, and from the awkward gesture he made to take up a piece of paper a second later, so were his hands. He dropped the parchment, and swore.   
  
Harry winced a little, but held his wince in, and leaned forwards to pick up the parchment for Kingsley. “You never thought that Dennis had anything to do with it, did you, sir?” he asked quietly. “Even when he came to us with that nonsense story about Tatyana Kingston.” That was something else he was angry about, he thought, something else he should have taxed Dennis with. Dennis had either given Kingston’s name up because she was a criminal—which meant he had sheltered her until then—or because he wanted to use her as a distraction and she was innocent—which meant he was sacrificing one of his own people to protect the Bard.  
  
“I never did,” said Kingsley, and sighed. “To be honest, Harry, I thought maybe you were jumping at shadows in your frustration that you couldn’t arrest Dennis for smuggling.”  
  
Harry rose slowly to his feet, holding Kingsley’s eyes. “If you try to release him now, I’ll walk away from the Aurors,” he said.  
  
Kingsley shook his head at once. “Of course I know we can’t release him now, Harry. Merlin. He held back information related to a  _murder_ investigation.” He closed his eyes. “And perhaps passed it on, if your speculations about his visit to your house are correct.”  
  
Harry nodded silently. He thought Dennis had come only to see his wards, and perhaps the silver fire he was adding to them, and might have passed word on to Colin if he had ever come into direct contact with his brother’s ghost.  
  
Malfoy was behind him, along with his mother, watching silently. Kingsley had wanted to have them stand out in the corridor while he and Harry spoke. Harry could understand the impulse, but he had still refused. He wasn’t about to subject Malfoy and his mum to attacks from Colin, who was probably inside the Ministry as well. And so far, it seemed that only Harry’s presence had really held Colin back.  
  
“So,” said Kingsley, opening his eyes. “You need to speak to experts on ghosts and figure out how they’re bound, or exorcised, or not.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “And I need permission to take the Malfoys with me, to keep them safe.”  
  
He started a second later. Something that felt like a light touch of fingers on his back slid along and up into his hair, on the nape of his neck, where they clenched for a moment. He wondered briefly if Colin had come into the room and was taunting him before the next attack.  
  
But he understood then, and relaxed. Malfoy was touching him, the way he seemed to like to do to Harry, without the notice of Kingsley. Harry had to admit that the touch, even if it was mostly in gratitude because of his commitment to keeping the Malfoys safe, relaxed him.  
  
He smiled at Kingsley, who was seriously considering the request. He said somberly, “The last two times you took them out, attacks happened.”  
  
“Attacks have happened at Grimmauld Place, too,” Harry pointed out. “No place is truly safe unless it’s never had a photograph in it. And I’m afraid that Colin can attach himself to our wands. So we need to figure out how to stop him, and I’d like to keep Draco and Narcissa close to me until then.” He thought referring to them by their first names might make Kingsley see how seriously he took this.  
  
It certainly made the hand brushing his back tighten for a second. Harry didn’t look back at Malfoy, as much as he wanted to. He had to keep his focus on impressing and convincing Kingsley, for now.  
  
Kingsley sighed deeply enough to make it sound as though his lungs would float out of his chest. “Yes. All right.” He waved a hand at Harry. “You have my permission to do what you need to do to track the ghost down and stop him.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Thank you, sir.” He had won a victory, and he was going to show Kingsley that he could be gracious in that victory. No need to hold it over his boss’s head.  
  
As he turned towards the door, Kingsley muttered something behind them that sounded like, “I just don’t know what you can do to stop a murderous ghost.”  
  
Harry couldn’t help smiling, serious situation and all, as he opened the door. “Well, sir, that’s what we’re going to find out.”  
  
*  
  
 _We._  
  
That word, as much as Potter’s words so far and the way he walked carefully enough that Draco could keep a hand on his back, convinced Draco that Potter was worth working with.  
  
And when the case was over and they had stopped the Bard and Draco and his mother were safe once more…  
  
 _We’ll just have to see, won’t we?_  
  
Narcissa spoke from beside Draco, startling him badly enough that he let his hand fall from Potter’s back. “Where you do intend to get information on the Bard, Mr. Potter? I do not think any of his former victims are alive enough to talk to you and tell you about him, are they?”  
  
Potter turned around, walking backwards, and shook his head somberly. “No. Until you, no one had ever survived a Bard attack.”  
  
Draco preened a little, despite knowing it had been Potter’s presence and good luck that had let them survive, rather than any inherent virtue of their own. It seemed that Potter understood why he might want to preen, though, because his glance at Draco and his small smile were fond.  
  
“We’re going to Hogwarts,” Potter continued, and stole Draco’s smile. “I hope we can talk to Myrtle and find out what keeps her in the school. We need to choose a place to bind Colin, but I can’t do that until I know more about the binding.”  
  
“I would think Hogwarts would be the most dangerous place you could bring us, given that the Bard died there.” Narcisa’s voice was cold, and she gripped one corner of her shawl tightly. Draco thought he was the only one who saw the way her hand trembled, and he was certainly the only one who knew what it meant.  
  
“He doesn’t haunt the scene of his death, though,” said Potter, shaking his head. He had wild hair even at his most serious, Draco noted irrelevantly, spilling down the side of his temples and framing his lips in a bewildering way. “I don’t think we need to worry about him following us there  _more_ than we have to somewhere else.” He turned and gave Draco a measuring glance. “But I want to make sure you’re comfortable with going there.”  
  
“I believe that I have already voiced my discomfort,” said Narcissa, in a chilly voice. She was staring off into the distance. Draco choked back a sigh. His mother was difficult, when she got like this. He hoped that Potter wouldn’t take too much offense.   
  
“Draco?”  
  
Draco jerked and gasped a little, because he hadn’t known Potter was going to use his first name like that, even if he’d used it in front of his boss. He met Potter’s eyes, and found them as sincere as always. Potter really  _did_ want to know if he was comfortable. And he might agree to cancel the journey to Hogwarts if Draco told him not to do it.  
  
Draco reveled in the notion of that power—that he could tell  _Harry Potter_ what to do—for a moment before he regretfully shook his head. “I think we have to go,” he said. “But I hope that you have plans on how to protect us, Potter. And plans on how to ultimately deal with the Bard.” It was something he hadn’t wanted to broach until they’d seen Creevey, because there was always the hope he would tell them something important, and planning ahead of that would be silly.  
  
“I might have something, yes.”  
  
Potter’s voice had become reticent again. Draco squinted at him. “What?” He was astonished, but now that he thought about it, he shouldn’t have been. Potter always knew all sorts of magic and secrets that no one else did, and now he stood with his hands clamped on the sides of his robe as though he was thinking hard.  
  
Potter hesitated, then jerked his head a little and said, “I don’t want to talk about it in the Ministry.”  
  
Draco nodded, understanding  _that,_ and continued walking down the corridor. People watched him and his mother pass and muttered. They seemed to not take much notice of Potter. Draco resisted the urge to shake his head in bafflement. It must simply be that they were used to him, he supposed. He couldn’t imagine becoming used to him the same way, but Potter probably hadn’t saved the lives of most of the people in here.  
  
Potter popped into the office he shared with Weasley and said something about Hogwarts to him that made Weasley’s mouth tighten. “It’s late enough now that there won’t be many people up to receive you,” he said. With a start, Draco cast a  _Tempus_ Charm and blinked when he realized it was nearly nine at night; he hadn’t realized how much time had passed when they were fighting the Bard, and realizing things, and talking to Weasley, Creevey, and Shacklebolt. “Why don’t you go home and wait until morning?”  
  
Potter turned his head and looked at Draco and his mother. Draco saw the hard glitter of his eyes, and wasn’t at all surprised about the answer he gave.  
  
“I don’t want to go back to a house haunted by Colin Creevey, and risk putting them in more danger.”  
  
Weasley started a little, as if he had forgotten about the presence of  _living_ people the Bard might threaten, and then sighed and said, “Fine. But at least let me call ahead to McGonagall for you.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, I suppose you could do that,” said Potter, and turned back to his friend with a faint smile. “Thanks.”  
  
Draco bit his lip savagely to hold in the chuckle that wanted to escape. Potter had been so intent, so determined to save him, so focused on  _him,_ that he had neglected to think of something as simple as informing the Headmistress of Hogwarts that they were coming.  
  
Well, all right, focused on both him and his mother. But it would be hard for Draco to be jealous of his own mother. He smiled at Potter, and Potter gave him a tired smile back, then made a motion towards the Ministry’s entrance.  
  
He didn’t  _have_ to do it, it would probably be of absolutely no survival advantage in another attack by the Bard, but Draco did stay within touching distance as he and Potter moved down the corridor with his mother slightly behind. And that was simply because he wanted to.  
  
Nor did Potter move away.  
  
*  
  
Harry stuck his hands deep into his pockets to keep them from trembling as he and the Malfoys marched up the road from Hogsmeade towards the castle. He could see the dying if he looked, or the delusions of the dying, the images of the people who had died in various places on the grounds. He could even see, as if it was before his eyes, Hagrid walking with Harry’s “body” in his arms and bawling as he did so.  
  
He wouldn’t say that he saw their ghosts. Not now.  
  
He knew what he could do to bind Colin, yes—what he would probably have to do, if their attempt to question Moaning Myrtle failed. But he hated thinking about it. Not least because if he  _did_ do it, then he might find himself tempted to do it again someday, and that would break a promise he had made himself, one that he considered as binding as ones that he had sometimes made to Dumbledore.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
That was—Draco, Harry supposed he should really call him, walking up beside Harry and giving him an intent look, one hand reaching out to tap his hand. Harry nodded to him. His first name was like a caress over his arm still, but he supposed Draco couldn’t see it the same way, or he would have stopped using it by now.  
  
“I think I know what you mean to do.” Draco’s voice was soft, musing, and his glance at Harry was sharp for only a second before he looked away and drew in a deep breath. “It wouldn’t have to do with the wand that you used to master the Dark Lord, would it?”  
  
Harry frowned. “Not exactly that. But—the other thing that gets implied and comes with that wand, yes.”  
  
Draco nodded slowly. “And you don’t want to do this.”  
  
Harry said nothing. His hands still ached sometimes, when he wasn’t thinking about it, for the shape of a wand made of elder wood and a small stone.  
  
Draco touched his shoulder one more time, then moved away. “Maybe there’s something else we can do to make sure that Creevey doesn’t attack people.”  
  
Harry hoped so. He didn’t want to hurt Colin in the sense of destroying him—although he would if there was no other solution to make him stop attacking people. But even more than that, he didn’t want to take up the power of the Master of Death. He didn’t know if he would find the wand and the stone so easy to put down this time if he did.  
  
*  
  
“Draco.”  
  
Draco caught his breath as he looked up at Moaning Myrtle. She looked exactly the same, of course. He’d changed enough that he thought she might not have recognized him, and he had been prepared to smile and make a personal plea for the knowledge she might otherwise deny them.  
  
But Myrtle was floating towards him with a misty smile and large tears in her eyes that made it perfectly clear she remembered him. For a second, a cold hand rested on his forehead.  
  
“You’re such a big boy now,” said Myrtle, and sniffled. “You p-probably didn’t even remember ugly Myrtle until you decided to come back here for something else—”  
  
“You were never ugly to me,” said Draco quietly, and reached up a hand. He had thought he might be a little afraid of her, knowing that a different ghost was trying so hard to end his life, but now that he saw her again, that seemed strange to him. Of  _course_ he wasn’t afraid of Myrtle. He wondered now why he had thought he would be.  
  
Myrtle flushed bright silver and gave a little wriggle in the air. Then she turned and stared at Harry. “But you want some help, don’t you?”  
  
Harry just gave her a sad stare. “There’s a ghost that’s killing people,” he said quietly. “We wanted to talk to you and find out what kept you here, and if it’s something that we could use on him.”  
  
Draco winced. He thought that saying it like that would make Myrtle wail and refuse to help them.  
  
But Myrtle only seemed fascinated instead. “Whose ghost is it?” she demanded, and then let out a gleeful little shriek and clapped her hands. “It’s not the Bloody Baron, is it? I  _knew_ he would start killing people someday!”  
  
“No,” said Harry. Draco could tell by the way he stood that he had his hand on his wand in his sleeve, and blinked, wondering when he had become familiar enough with Harry’s body language to tell that. “Someone who died here during the Battle of Hogwarts. Colin Creevey.”  
  
Myrtle pulled herself up as if she was about to order troops into battle. Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought the identity of the ghost would mean much to her, because it seemed to him that Creevey had probably gone out and started killing people as soon as he could form into a proper vengeful spirit, instead of haunting Hogwarts. But Myrtle was staring steadily from one of them to another now, and she had an expression on her face that Draco had never seen there.  
  
“No,” she said softly, shaking her head. “I won’t help you enslave him and bring him down.”  
  
Harry’s expression was also strange. “Binding him is the best option, Myrtle,” he said. “Exorcising him and tying him some place where he would be helpless. Otherwise, I’m going to have to destroy him.” He hesitated for a second, then pulled out something silvery and shimmering from his pocket. It was the Invisibility Cloak. Draco blinked, understanding now why they had made a short detour to Grimmauld Place before coming here.  
  
Myrtle understood what Harry was saying, and her shriek was dreadful. Draco felt his mother, who had been standing behind them, too well-bred to voice her dismay at the dirty bathroom, recoil. Myrtle rose straight up in the air, still shrieking and shaking her head.  
  
“You can’t bind him here!” she shouted. “He’s too scary!”  
  
Harry took a step forwards, and Draco knew he was seeing the hunting Auror in the intense way that Harry’s face flushed, how he extended one hand as if he would hold Myrtle there. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “Why does he scare  _you_?”  
  
Myrtle only shrieked again and dived into her toilet. Draco opened his mouth to call to her. It was possible she would come out and talk to him where she wouldn’t for Harry.  
  
And then another voice, one that Draco knew well from the dungeons, said, “Perhaps I would be a better source of information.”  
  
Draco turned around and said hollowly, “Bloody Baron. Sir.”


	17. Bloody Bindings

You can tell us something about Colin Creevey and why Myrtle doesn’t want him bound here as a ghost?” Harry spoke as clearly and specifically as he could, hoping to draw the Bloody Baron’s attention away from Draco. The way he was staring made Harry wonder if  _this_ ghost had a grudge against Draco, as much as Myrtle seemed to like him.  
  
The Bloody Baron turned to focus on him. Harry looked back calmly. He had seen a lot of horrific things on his job, and at least the Bloody Baron seemed unlikely to attack. Harry had his wand and his training and, if he had to, the Deathly Hallows, should that happen.  
  
Finally, the Bloody Baron murmured, “Not easy to intimidate, are you? Is that just the power of the Mastery of Death, or something else?”  
  
Harry shrugged with his head rolling towards his shoulder. “Both? Neither? I don’t know. I do know that the Bard of Morning’s Hope has attacked me several times, and I’m not dead yet.”  
  
“Is  _that_ what he calls himself?” A tremble seemed to run through the Bloody Baron, one that stirred him from the bottom of his wound to the top of it, and his face reformed into a scowling grimace. “Do you know why?”  
  
“Not for sure, since he’s never bothered to explain it, but I think the ‘morning’s hope’ part refers to him having cleared the world of Death Eaters and people on Voldemort’s side during the Battle of Hogwarts, since that’s what he wants to do,” said Harry. He positioned himself carefully so that he was standing in front of Draco; the Baron seemed to have a tendency to stare at him again. “As for Bard, I don’t know. I suppose he had to call himself something.”  
  
The Bloody Baron went back to staring at Harry again, which he much preferred, no matter how unnerving it sometimes was. His fingers seemed to strum on the air as if playing an invisible harp.  
  
Then he nodded. “I will tell you what I know,” he said. “I am in a sense bound to Hogwarts, but I can roam the grounds if I wish to exert some effort. I was there the night that Creevey’s ghost formed.”  
  
Harry frowned at him. “You knew that, and you knew a lot of the victims were former Slytherins, but you didn’t tell anyone what you saw?”  
  
The Bloody Baron laughed, a sound like a man dying of tuberculosis. “Who would have sought me out? Who would have believed me? And besides,” he paused for a moment, and his eyes grew distant, “I saw no connection. I read the details of the killings in the papers, but that does not mean I am any more adept at recognizing a ghost’s handiwork than, say, an Auror.” He shot Harry a piercing glance.  
  
Harry nodded in silent apology, and waited for the Baron to go on. The Baron seemed to be playing the same kind of waiting game, as if he wanted to see whether Harry would interrupt or not, but at last he nodded. “The ghost that formed came up from the ground where Creevey had been killed. I knew his brother had spent some time there, whispering apologies and watering the ground with his tears. Tear-watered soil, or blood-watered, is more likely to spawn a ghost than ordinary ground, and this was both.”  
  
Harry nodded back, not able to think of anything to say, his mind full of the horrible sight that the Bloody Baron had probably seen there.   
  
“Creevey arose and looked around him,” the Bloody Baron continued, eyes once again distant. “I tried to speak to him. I could sense his spirit flailing around between the mortal world and the—one we live in.” He gave Harry a ghastly grin. “You understand there are some things that are useless for ghosts to try and explain to a mortal.”  
  
Harry only nodded again, not wanting to anger the Baron or upset him any further. The Baron sighed as if reluctant that Harry had managed to avoid a fight, and went on.   
  
“He didn’t speak to me,” said the Bloody Baron. “Instead, he stared into the distance and began to scream. I can’t tell you how long the screams went on.” The Baron’s voice was low, slow, grim. “What I can tell you is that I began to hear other voices.”  
  
“Other voices?” Draco asked as if he couldn’t help himself. Harry shifted a little, making sure that he kept his body between the Bloody Baron’s gaze and Draco’s face. Maybe it was stupid, but he was still worried about the way the Baron had looked at Draco a few minutes ago.  
  
“Yes,” said the Bloody Baron. “They were voices I did not know—not voices of Hogwarts ghosts or other spirits that used to haunt the stones here. Creevey screamed and seemed to grow more solid and defined as I watched him. I cannot tell you how long this continued. Even after he faded from sight, I could hear the screams.”  
  
“For days afterwards?” Harry asked.  
  
“For more than a year.”  
  
Harry shuddered. He hated the thought of Colin in torment for that long. He might—he would  _always_ think that Colin’s ghost needed to be stopped before he killed again, but at least he would make sure that he wasn’t put through that kind of torture.  
  
“What happened?” Draco whispered. “Did someone summon him using a necromantic ritual, and he couldn’t break free of it?” He sounded as though he wouldn’t put that past Dennis. Harry might have agreed if it was the ghost of anyone but Dennis’s brother.  
  
“No,” said the Bloody Baron. He hesitated for a long moment. “You must remember,” he said, almost as sternly as Professor Snape used to, “that this is only speculation. There is no reason to think that it  _is_ the truth. Creevey’s ghost is unusual. I have long experience in these matters, but only with the variety of spirits I have seen pass through Hogwarts’s halls. I have no knowledge of ghosts elsewhere.”  
  
“We know that, sir,” said Draco, and he was speaking respectfully enough, and the Baron was listening closely enough, that Harry felt comfortable shifting his weight a little. “But it’s still more knowledge than we have right now. We didn’t even think the Bard of Morning’s Hope might be a ghost until today.”  
  
The Bloody Baron waited long enough that Harry would have thought he had changed his mind about telling them, except he didn’t fade through the wall or floor. Then he grunted and nodded. Once again, the ethereal blood that coated him seemed to shimmer and reform.  
  
“I think that he was the receptacle for other spirits of the battlefield who would have arisen as ghosts themselves, but they lacked his driving force or his mental strength,” said the Bloody Baron. “There are many reasons that Creevey could have been different. He was among the youngest who died in that battle, and youth is known for its strength and vigor. Or possibly because he came back to fight out of pure courage, instead of because of the desperation that led some of the others to fight, he was different. What I know is that those other potential ghosts contributed their strength to him—I think. They made him live through the moments of their own deaths, and filled him with their anguish and their longing for vengeance. It would explain many things, especially his strength and the fact that he appears to have claimed many victims, not only his own murderer.”  
  
Harry nodded soberly, shaken. The thought of what Colin had been existing through…  
  
He wondered for a moment if Dennis had suspected that about his brother, and then hissed in anger and dismissed the thought. Yes, all right, it was potentially true. But that only meant that Dennis ought to have wanted  _more_ for his brother to be laid to rest, instead of wandering around in the thrall of all that pain. Dennis’s motives made little sense to Harry, whether or not he had really known his brother was the Bard of Morning’s Hope.  
  
“That explains why the attacks didn’t occur right away,” Draco whispered. “He was suffering through  _that_. Becoming the kind of ghost who had the strength to bypass so many wards and barriers and attack so many people.”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Harry asked abruptly. “If you knew that he was an unusual ghost and the way he had formed was strange, why didn’t you go and do something about his suffering? Tell someone in Slytherin, at least?”  
  
The Bloody Baron looked at Harry in turn, and Harry found himself flinching a little before that endless, cold tunnel of a gaze. “I believed it had happened, and then Creevey had gone on to whatever awaited him. He was in Hogwarts for a short time. Then he disappeared. That happens to many ghosts. We—I and the Grey Lady and the other House ghosts—are unusual in having lasted so long a time. Myrtle is young compared to us. I thought Creevey roamed at all around the school because he was troubled, and then came to terms with what he had seen and faded as most spirits do.” The Bloody Baron shook his head slowly. “I would have attempted to speak to him if I had known.”  
  
Harry believed that. He didn’t know the Bloody Baron that well—he couldn’t even say that he’d known Nearly-Headless Nick that well—but he thought he was telling the truth.   
  
“Then,” he said, “you know that we want to end things as much to set Colin free as to stop him from killing anyone else. Do you think binding him to one place would help? Or would that only drive him more crazy with the suffering and the anguish he’s absorbed?”  
  
The Bloody Baron was silent. Then he nodded once. “I think that is what would happen. And you would have to search long—and would probably still fail—to find a location that was not frequented by humans. I think he has already gone over the edge into our equivalent of insanity. He would only grow worse if he couldn’t roam and kill, and then he would turn his revenge eventually on whatever human happened along where he was bound.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Then there’s my other idea. I think I can kill him entirely with the help of the Deathly Hallows. Strip his ghostly power and banish his soul.”  
  
“You would not banish it,” said the Bloody Baron, and now he had lifted a hand in which the transparent image of a sword flickered. “You know better than that,  _Master of Death._ You would kill him. I will not permit you to exercise such power on any spirit that formed in Hogwarts. He deserves a rescue.”  
  
Harry stared directly into his eyes. He knew that it would be a hard fight of it, and he didn’t particularly want to do it, but he thought he could extinguish the Bloody Baron if the ghost attacked him.   
  
“Then what do you suggest?” he whispered. “If binding won’t work, and the passage of time won’t weaken him, and he only goes on killing, even people like Draco’s mother who have killed  _no one_ , then what do you think should happen next?” He heard Narcissa shift at the mention of her name, the only noise she had made for the whole of this long conversation.  
  
The Bloody Baron’s sword vanished, and he leaned forwards, bobbing as if from a cork in the middle of water. “Bring his spirit here. I can calm him and bind him in a realm where he cannot interact with the human world.”  
  
“What?” Harry asked. “How?”  
  
The Bloody Baron smiled, a horrible sight. “You know that Peeves fears me. There are reasons why. There are—reasons that I have control over any ghost within these walls.”  
  
“What are they, then?” But Harry felt Draco lay his hand on his back at the same moment as the Baron’s smile widened and Narcissa cleared her throat.  
  
“I do not see why we need to know that, if you feel that we can trust the Bloody Baron’s word,” she said. “And as yet, is there any reason we could not?”  
  
Harry stared at the ghost. What he had said about Colin sounded as though it made sense; it would explain how the innocent boy Harry had known had changed into this vengeance-crazed killer. And he was also willing to trust that the Bloody Baron would be trouble if he fought him, even if the Deathly Hallows would ultimately let Harry overwhelm him, and there wouldn’t be any reason  _not_ to trust that the Baron could control Colin.  
  
“Myrtle said that he frightened her,” Harry said abruptly. “Wouldn’t the same thing happen if I brought him back and you bound him here? He would frighten the other ghosts, or the children, or the professors?”  
  
The Bloody Baron gave a low laugh. “I would make sure that he was only able to pull pranks, the way Peeves does, until he became harmless. Believe me, Mr. Potter, I can sense when Peeves’s energy is building up to a point where he intends to inflict permanent harm on someone else. And I would do the same thing with the young Creevey.”  
  
Harry rolled the thought around in his mind, and sighed slowly. It was probably the best fate he could hope for when it came to Colin. For one thing, Harry didn’t have the power to bring him back to sanity. He didn’t even have the power to make him stop attacking, although Colin appeared to have moderated some of his attacks on Harry himself.  
  
And Harry didn’t really want to condemn Colin to death or whatever the equivalent of it was. He would only have done that if the choice was between Colin’s continued existence as a ghost and the safety of the living.  
  
“Could you make sure that he wouldn’t attack even the children or relatives of people who died here fighting on Voldemort’s side in the Battle of Hogwarts?” he asked.  
  
The Bloody Baron nodded, not removing his shimmering eyes from Harry’s face.  
  
“All right,” said Harry. “Then do you have a suggestion about how we’re going to get him here? If he can attach himself to the wood of our wands and so on, then he’s probably already overheard part of this conversation and knows our intentions. And he wouldn’t want to come back here anyway, if he even suspects that you have the power to bind him.”  
  
“He is not here,” said the Bloody Baron, and his eyes glowed. “My power keeps him out of the castle. He did try to attach himself to you, and perhaps did during the walk up from Hogsmeade, but the moment you passed inside the boundaries of Hogwarts, my power took over. He is not here,” he repeated, and he sounded as if he was looking at Draco this time.  
  
“All right,” said Harry. “But then he knows you’re powerful enough to keep him out.” He considered asking the Baron about the source of that power, and rejected the notion. He would probably only talk in riddles anyway, and Harry didn’t have time for that. “So how are we going to get him here?”  
  
“You happen to have with you rather perfect bait,” said the Bloody Baron, and this time he was definitely looking at the Malfoys.  
  
Harry straightened up. “I am  _not_ leaving them exposed to the Bard. I made a promise to protect them, and I’m going to keep it.”  
  
The ghost chuckled, a noise like blood bubbling down a pipe. “I was not proposing that you abandon them. Only that you place them close enough to the boundaries of Hogwarts that Creevey’s ghost is drawn in. I will protect them from there. They were Slytherins,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth again. “I have all the loyalty to them I need.”  
  
He turned and made his bobbing bow to Draco and Narcissa this time. “And now, it remains to be seen if, despite being Slytherins, they have courage enough to agree.”  
  
*  
  
Draco looked at the Bloody Baron and swallowed. It wasn’t like this was the ghost who had comforted him when he was sobbing his heart out over the Vanishing Cabinet and being part of the Dark Lord’s army. And he had never had a close relationship with the Baron. Since he seemed so concerned about Creevey as a fellow ghost, maybe he would let him murder Draco and his mother after all.  
  
As if sensing his doubts, the Baron gave him a calm, implacable glance. “I do want to help the Bard,” he said. “For what measure of help I can give. But it means that he will not kill people, because if he killed them here, then probably the humans would drive all of us forth. No. I shall permit no deaths to take place on these grounds from ghosts, any more than I have from Peeves.”  
  
Draco hesitated. It was true that Peeves had never killed anyone. And the Bloody Baron would really have no reason to lie about being able to confine the Bard. If Draco had never had a close relationship with this ghost, he’d never antagonized him, either.  
  
“You will exact vengeance for my husband?” Narcissa asked abruptly.  
  
The Bloody Baron smiled. “The first months under my confinement, when he finds that he cannot fulfil the purpose for which he was created, ought to be revenge enough for anyone.”  
  
Draco knew his mother was thinking about that. He held his breath. His mother cared more about vengeance, he thought. He cared more about survival.  
  
“Very well,” said his mother, and Draco nodded. “Tell what we must do.”  
  
Draco glanced at Potter, to see what he thought. If  _he_ believed this was a bad idea, then Draco would try to talk his mother out of it.  
  
But Potter was looking hopeful for the first time since they had learned about the Bard, and Draco relaxed. Yes, he thought, he could live with this.  
  
 _And survive._  
  
“Tell us,” he echoed.


	18. The Bait

“I don’t like this,” Potter muttered for the eighteenth time as he cast another protective spell on Draco. “I think the Bloody Baron could have found another way of drawing Colin in than doing this.”  
  
“If you have such great ideas, why didn’t you tell them to the Baron already?” Draco asked, adjusting his cloak around his shoulders and glancing into the mirror again. The mirror was the same one that Potter had spent so much time preening in front of when he was going to act Draco’s part in his father’s funeral. Draco hesitated, then shoved his wand a little deeper into his pocket.  
  
“I just  _meant_ ,” said Potter, his voice a grinding noise between gritted teeth, “that I think  _he_ could have come up with something else. Not that  _I_ had.”  
  
Draco spun around to face him. Potter jumped and eyed him warily. Draco smiled and let his hand rest on Potter’s shoulder.  
  
“Tell me the truth,” he breathed. “You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”  
  
Potter stared at him some more, then snorted. “Of  _course_ I’m bloody worried about you,” he said, and squeezed Draco’s hand once before he knocked it off his shoulder. “I promised to protect you, and you’re about to go and put yourself at risk because of a ghost’s promise, at the mercy of a ghost that we’ve already failed to do anything about for months. Of course I’m worried.”  
  
“But it’s more than that,” Draco said, and ignored the way that one of Potter’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t be mistaken about this. “Of course it is. You care more about me than about a random victim of the Bard’s attacks. I couldn’t have been fooled.”  
  
Potter drew himself higher, his face angrier than Draco had expected. “I care about all the victims I failed, or that the other Aurors failed.”  
  
Draco sighed heavily. “You aren’t usually this oblivious, Potter, so I’m going to imagine that you’re simply stubborn.” He leaned in, and even Potter’s breath stuttered a little at the way Draco was looking at him. Draco knew  _that_ wasn’t simply his imagination. “Come on. What do you think of me?”  
  
*  
  
Harry wished Draco had given him an easier question to answer.  
  
 _That you’re a stubborn git and an innocent victim and someone who put himself in danger by going to a fancy robe shop and someone who shouldn’t have had to watch his father die and someone who was a prat to me in school…_  
  
But none of those felt like the right answer. In fact, Harry knew they weren’t. Hesitantly, he reached out and squeezed Draco’s shoulder once.  
  
“Yes,” Draco breathed, and gave Harry a brilliant smile. “I thought so.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask how Draco could tell anything about Harry’s emotions from a single gesture when  _Harry_ couldn’t tell what they meant, and then Draco leaned in and rested his mouth against Harry’s.  
  
Harry thought he should jump backwards. He should splutter and protest and tell Draco that he was insane, and just because they had been—well, close—for the past few days wasn’t the same as being  _intimate_.  
  
But he couldn’t, and that was probably the clearest sign that Draco was right.  
  
Draco didn’t move, and Harry realized it was probably up to him to show he wanted this. Hesitantly, he kissed back, trying to decide if it would be different to kiss a man rather than a woman, if he had any idea, whether Draco would be knowing or expecting something better.  
  
And then he put it out of his mind as Draco kissed him back more ferociously, and moved him back towards the bathroom counter.  
  
Harry went with the motion, too dazed to resist. His back hit the counter hard enough to make him grunt in pain, and Draco chuckled and kissed him more firmly. Harry raised his hand and pushed Draco’s hair out of his eyes, which glowed with a determination Harry had only seen before in Quidditch.  
  
Then Draco’s tongue touched his lips, and it was a shock like someone had cast a healing charm on him without permission. Harry jumped, and Draco used the distraction to sweep his tongue into Harry’s mouth. Harry shivered and kissed back, one hand creeping around Draco’s shoulder to squeeze it.  
  
Draco finally pulled away, and Harry hoped that it was because he felt just as overwhelmed. He closed his eyes and sighed, “Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to begin things, when I have to go out and be bait for the Bard in an hour’s time.”  
  
“Is it that close?” Harry blurted out, and regretted it a little when he saw the way Draco’s smile had changed.  
  
“Lost track of time?” Draco purred, and hooked his fingers into the collar of Harry’s robes. “I had no idea my kisses were so powerful.”  
  
“Maybe not your kisses,” Harry retorted. “Maybe other ways you use your mouth.”  
  
He was pleased to see the fantasies that visibly lit Draco’s eyes after he said that, but when he reached out with one hand, Draco dodged, clucking his tongue. “My mother is still waiting downstairs,” he said. “I doubt we’d be able to explain the delay to her in any language she’d accept.”  
  
Harry choked a little, thinking about the way Narcissa would probably react if they tried to tell her why they were late. “Yes, fine,” he said. “But we’re going to continue this later. And do you know why?”  
  
“Because you’re attracted to me.”  
  
That was a statement, or at least Draco probably meant it to be, but it did have a  _hint_ of a question at the end, Harry thought, smug. He shook his head chidingly at Draco. “Because you’re going to survive having the Bard come after you,” he said. “You’re going to survive, or I’ll summon your ghost back, and what the Baron wanted to do to Colin will look like nothing next to the scolding I’ll give you.”  
  
Draco’s smile lit his face again. He reached out one hand, and Harry took it and clasped it in in silence. Then Draco nodded, and they went downstairs.  
  
*  
  
Draco hoped that he hid his fear fairly well. It was different, being out with the Bloody Baron near the boundaries of the Forbidden Forest, from standing inside Hogwarts and facing the Baron with Harry’s protective presence near.  
  
“I do not know,” the Baron murmured, “why you fear me so much when you have a much more powerful ghost who intends to kill you by turning your blood to ice.”  
  
Draco turned, glad for the distraction and despising the way his heart was reacting at the same time. “What do you mean, more powerful? How can you  _stop_ him if he’s more powerful?”  
  
The Bloody Baron made a hollow, booming sound that it took Draco a few seconds to understand. It seemed to be the ghostly version of clucking his tongue. “I meant that he was more powerful because he wants to harm you. I do not. There are things I could do if you had not been a Slytherin student…”  
  
His voice trailed off, and for a second, the ground seemed to waver in front of Draco. He was looking down into an abyss that swam with silver and grey mist, and something with low, thumping snarls was rising out of it towards him.  
  
Draco found himself flinging his hands out without thought to maintain his balance, crying out in desperation. The abyss vanished before he could fall into it, although the snarls lasted a moment longer. Draco stumbled on solid ground and turned to glare at the Bloody Baron.  
  
The Baron was drifting on curls of mist a short distance above Draco, and the shimmering blood that soaked his side was moving and falling like some kind of cloak blown by the wind. His pale eyes were fixed on Draco. Draco shivered, abruptly conscious of the same terror he had felt when he was a Slytherin student trying to deal with having the Bloody Baron appear at breakfast or in a dark corridor behind him.  
  
“Were it not for Potter being the Master of Death and the Bard giving ghosts at Hogwarts a bad reputation,” the Baron whispered, “I would be on his side, and not yours. Do not underestimate the gap between the living and the dead.”  
  
Draco thought he couldn’t do much more than swallow and concentrate on the ground in front of him. There was still fog out there, he saw, a thicker fog than usually gathered at Hogwarts even on winter mornings. And there was a dark shape deep in the midst of the fog that appeared to be floating towards him.  
  
“He’s here,” Draco breathed. He was abruptly sure of it, despite not having much warning before the past Bard attacks. He kept himself from reacting with a shout by sheer force of will, and it took something stronger than that to keep himself from backing away or running towards the school.  
  
Draco thought it was most what Harry would say, if he found that Draco had run when he was in the middle of a dangerous thing  _he_ had agreed to do. Harry was no longer purely Gryffindor, but Draco thought he probably couldn’t approve of cowardice.  
  
“Ah,” said the Baron, and when Draco glanced at him again, he had changed.  
  
Draco blinked, trying desperately to force his eyes through the fog of his own perceptions, rather than the physical sort, and see what was happening. But it was impossible. The Baron had become a mass of shifting shadows, some of them with faces, some of them like lions or other beasts, and some with forms that Draco knew he would see in his nightmares for ages. He whipped his head aside, controlling his urge to whimper.  
  
And rolling to meet the Bloody Baron was the transparent shape of the boy Draco had known as Colin Creevey, only different, again.   
  
Jagged, twisted blades seemed to grow from every point inside his body, spreading out to sprout through his eyes and mouth and fingers. Behind them and around them was a mass of dancing light that made Draco sick, some color between grey and white and brown that was none of them. And Draco could hear screams and feel, like winds plucking at the small hairs on his arms, rich tingles of pain. The Bard carried agony around him and before him, and it was hard for Draco not to faint as he started to back up.  
  
“Now,” said the Baron, although a dozen voices echoed his, most of them wordless, and flung himself forwards.  
  
The Bard’s movement paused for a second, and Draco thought he was attempting to go backwards. But the blades inside his body scraped and rooted deep into the earth, and that slowed him down long enough for the Baron to catch up.  
  
Or maybe the Baron was just stronger. Honestly, Draco thought a nauseating moment later, as his eyes rang with those shifting images and his ears with those strained cries, how would he ever know?  
  
He had to look away from the contest, as little as he wanted to, because it made him feel as though he was inviting a strike at his unprotected back. His throat trembled, and he put one hand on it. He didn’t want to vomit  _now_ , when he had survived the initial, unprotected glance at the Bard he’d taken.  
  
“Draco!”  
  
That was Harry, running towards him. Draco stared at him. Had Harry come to take him away from here? And why was Narcissa behind him? They had agreed to try the trap with only Draco as bait first, because he was the one the Bard seemed to want more, and so there was no reason for her not to wait safely inside the school.  
  
Then Draco heard a sigh behind him, and an icy stab entered his body under his spine.  
  
*  
  
Harry had tensed when he heard what the Bloody Baron said. When Draco began to stumble as if he was drunk, Narcissa had reached out and gripped his arm hard enough to hurt.  
  
But Harry hadn’t started running until he saw one part of Colin’s ghost begin to separate from the rest that was engaging with the Bloody Baron.  
  
As Harry pounded across the grass and dirt that separated him from Draco, his mind leaped back and forth with the reasoning for a second. Colin was made up of the pain of a lot of different people. Maybe the Baron could take most of those people, but one had got away and was still going to kill Draco—  
  
Then Draco went down, before Harry could get there.  
  
And Harry felt as if he had been walking a tightrope that had dropped him into the middle of a frothing sea of sharks.  
  
 _That’s it. This is when I do whatever I must to survive._  
  
Harry reached into the deepest pocket of his robes, one that he had enchanted like one of Hermione’s bags to contain much more space than it seemed as if it could, and pulled them out, bundled together, the Invisibility Cloak and the Elder Wand. And they were near the Forbidden Forest, where he had dropped the Resurrection Stone.  
  
He focused furiously on the grey shape that was still dancing behind Draco, ice rushing down the intangible sword it appeared to have stuck in him. The ghost barely had a face, but it did have a head and hands, and Harry could see the moment when it jerked and turned abruptly to face him.   
  
Harry gave it a sweet smile and slid his hands into the Cloak, clutched around the Wand. He drew on the power of the Deathly Hallows, which he had never tried to do before, and felt them come to thrumming life in his hands, deep and cold. It felt as if he was the one holding ice now, although he was also the only one that the ice couldn’t hurt.  
  
“Go,” he whispered.  
  
His voice echoed in several different dimensions that didn’t have anything to do with his own, and the world turned sideways like a piece of paper flipping over. Harry could see, in sparkling shades of grey, a glowing figure inside both Draco and Narcissa. It was probably their souls, he thought dimly. The soul didn’t exactly have the shape of their bodies, but it flowed as if it had a heartbeat.  
  
And in front of him were the ghosts, glowing figures alone, but more solid than those embodied souls.  
  
 _Because they’re_ dis _embodied souls,_ Harry thought, and he turned to the one attacking Draco. It had a face here, although Harry didn’t recognize it. It looked young, and dismayed. Probably another student, like Colin, who had died when the Death Eaters attacked the school. Maybe one killed by Lucius Malfoy.  
  
Right now, Harry didn’t give a shit.  
  
He snarled and snapped the Cloaked wand at the ghost. He had a spell in mind, but he wasn’t sure if it would actually materialize out of the wand, and so he simply threw raw will and power through the Elder Wand.  
  
It worked—for a certain value of “worked.” The wand glowed a brilliant blue-green, like the color of the lake when Harry had swum through it in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and the spell emerged from it as a series of bubbles. The bubbles swarmed around the ghost, and the ghost uttered one shrill, harsh scream that took forever to come to Harry’s ears, moving as slowly as the bubbles had.  
  
Then they popped.  
  
And took the ghost with them.  
  
Harry staggered. The world around him flipped over again, and he was back where the sun could reach him, where he could hear sounds and see colors that had nothing to do with either grey or the spells he might cast with the Elder Wand. He staggered one more time and managed to hold himself up by locking his legs. It would be embarrassing if he fell over something. Aurors were trained to avoid such compromising situations, lest it make them look weak in front of the criminals they were trying to arrest.  
  
But when he looked around, with dazed eyes, the first person he saw—for a value of “person”—was the Bloody Baron.  
  
The Baron was moving slowly away from the edge of the boundary that marked the limits of Hogwarts and the limits of his power, something drifting behind him. It looked like a globe of light to Harry, and inside the globe flickered Colin’s face, and sometimes a pair of hands that looked like they were drumming on the globe.  
  
“I believe that we had a deal, Harry Potter,” whispered the Bloody Baron. “Master of Death.”  
  
“We had a deal that involved you keeping Malfoy safe,” said Harry. His own voice sounded weirdly distorted to him. Narcissa had run past him and was crouched down at Draco’s side. Harry didn’t know how badly he was hurt, if he needed a Healer right away. He could only trust that Draco was still alive because he thought Narcissa would have burst out screaming if he wasn’t. “You didn’t. One of the ghosts that composed Colin broke through the barrier and hurt him. Didn’t it.”  
  
“The power of the Master of Death is not to be wielded so heavily,” the Baron continued, apparently not hearing him. “You could have done many things, Master of Death, but not what you did. You could have trapped the ghost and imprisoned him, as I have done. You could have driven him away. You could have stripped him of his power and left him drifting as a bodiless voice on the wind.”  
  
His power was swelling, billowing around him like a rising pair of wings. “But not destroyed him.”  
  
And he struck, giving Harry no time to shield himself with the magic of the Deathly Hallows.


	19. The Reckoning

Draco woke to a sensation of burning cold in his back, and his mother’s hand on his shoulder. He blinked, and turned his head. Narcissa immediately pressed him back into the ground, shaking her head hard enough that Draco yielded and lay there, although he didn’t really know why.  
  
“No,” Narcissa breathed. “You don’t want to surface right now.”  
  
Of course, that made Draco only the more determined to “surface.” He managed to turn his eyes without turning his head, made easier by the fact that the cold seemed to be moving up from his back to his head, where it would probably cause a hell of an ache sooner rather than later.  
  
He was in time to see Harry roll aside from what looked like a cluster of silvery shapes, all of them centered on an expanding, roiling sphere filled with sick-making light. Several of the silvery shapes clashed back together, and then grew what looked like transparent swords and spikes and attacked Harry again.  
  
Transparent—ghostly. That was the right word, Draco thought. He was watching the Bloody Baron, who seemed to be made of half a dozen ghosts suddenly, fighting Harry.  
  
He tried to press his hands against the ground and urge himself to his feet. His mother held him down again, her eyes burning desperately at him. Draco shook his head. He couldn’t lie here when someone who had risked his life for Draco’s family was fighting alone.  
  
“What made the Baron break his word and attack Harry?” he asked. His mother would tell him that, at least.  
  
“He destroyed the ghost that was attacking you.” Narcissa moved as if she would shield him from the sight of the battle, but Draco glared, and she hesitated, then stayed still. “The Baron seems to value the dead more than the living.”  
  
Draco shivered, remembering the imagined abyss that had opened at his feet, and what the Baron had said about the gap separating the dead from people like Draco.  
  
“That’s right,” he said, and reached for his wand. His mother glared at him and put one hand on his wrist as if she would pin even his hand to the ground.  
  
“You can’t help him right now,” she snapped at Draco. “You’ll only distract him. And he doesn’t need to be distracted. If someone with the full magic of the Deathly Hallows can’t shield himself, then how are  _you_ going to help?”  
  
Draco ignored her. He knew what he owed, and what he felt. If Harry died trying to defend them, then Draco would have worse than the mere sort of hollow aching he would have felt in the case of  _any_ Auror who did that.  
  
The cold burning had lessened, and he had only the sort of pounding headache he had often faced down when he was working as a torturer under the Dark Lord. This was more important than any of those times. He got his knees beneath him, and then he managed to find his feet the same way.  
  
His mother had fallen back with an expression of faux indifference on her face. Draco met her gaze and gestured with his head towards Harry.  
  
“I know you don’t like thinking about it,” he said. “But  _think._  What are people going to say if Harry Potter, of all people, dies in a battle he was fighting for us?”  
  
His mother’s expression changed. Draco smiled grimly and turned away from her, focusing on the swirling mist of shapes that Harry was dancing through, his hand on his wand and his voice shouting words that Draco could hear but not understand from this distance and the distortion from the ghosts.  
  
Draco tested his arms and legs for one moment. Yes, he wanted to help Harry, but he didn’t want to rush into a battle where he was going to be useless.  
  
When he thought he did understand the limits, he nodded and charged, casting the first spell that came to him, one that the Dark Lord had used casually on a few corners of Malfoy Manor said to be haunted.  
  
“ _Abscido phasmatem_!”  
  
*  
  
Harry had avoided the first strike because he was lucky, and because all the Bloody Baron’s component ghosts appeared to be operating together. He knew he wouldn’t get that lucky again, and as he backed away from the silvery crowd approaching him, he raised the Elder Wand.  
  
The Baron had paused and grown those weapons from his ghosts. Then he had circled around, off to the side, and was coming towards Harry in such a variety of shapes that Harry doubted he was behind all of them. Some of them were illusions, designed to trick Harry and make him stumble or feint in the wrong direction.  
  
It would simply help if Harry could tell which of them that was.  
  
“ _Abscido phasmatem!_ ”  
  
The spell was shouted from behind him, and snagged at Harry’s mind for a moment. He knew that incantation. He had never used it himself, it had been suggested it was a Dark incantation, but he knew, someone in Auror training had told him—  
  
The spiral that opened up past him had its jagged edges, blue and black and gold, but Harry found something beautiful in the sight, too. It pierced through one of the sword-wielding shapes, one of the ones that must have been a distraction, and grabbed something else, more solid. There was a shrill scream that radiated through Harry’s head, that made him grab his ears in pain, and then the air flickered and thinned.  
  
The Bloody Baron roared in wordless rage, and the air around Harry turned as cold as it probably would have on a mountaintop. Harry saw two of the shapes coalesce into a sleek, shark-like one, and they bowled past him.  
  
Towards whoever had cast that spell. Probably Draco, or maybe Narcissa.  
  
Harry sprang in front of it and snapped the Invisibility Cloak like he was a bullfighter. The shape turned to the side, spinning flat, distracted by the Cloak, and Harry brought up the Elder Wand in front of him and gasped out the first spell that came to mind. “ _Reducto!_ ”  
  
The spell shouldn’t have worked on a ghost, and probably wouldn’t have if it was cast by any other hand than the Master of Death’s. But here, it did its work just fine, seizing the Baron and propelling him backwards. Again he roared, and this time, Harry saw every misty shape in existence open several dozen eyes and fix on him.  
  
“You should not have destroyed a ghost on my land,” said the Bloody Baron, and the ground beneath Harry was swirling, turning cold and dangerous, opening to reveal dark flames shooting up from some lower life. “For a Master of Death, you are dangerously inexperienced.” The voice was in Harry’s ears and also coming from all around him, breathed and hissed and roared from a distance. “You do not know the first thing about the afterlife…”  
  
Harry thought of the white space where he had met Dumbledore and focused on an image of King’s Cross Station as he replied, “I know you aren’t supposed to be able to attack the living, or you would have been banished from Hogwarts long ago. What makes us different?”  
  
“You  _killed a ghost_.”  
  
“Should I have let Draco die?” Harry took a step forwards and ignored the dark flames from the ground, which flickered around his legs without any heat.  _Illusions. More illusions_. “You broke your word.”  
  
“I broke nothing that I did not have to break.” The Bloody Baron’s shapes eddied back and forth before him, and Harry thought he could see some of them with insect faces, some with dragon features, some with horse heads, before they all disappeared back into what was essentially curling foam, sparking glints of white and silver. “The Bard of Morning’s Hope was stronger than I thought he was. He contained multitudes.”  
  
“And we should have accepted the advent of a murderous ghost without fighting back,” Harry said mockingly, pacing a step forwards and pausing to regard the Bloody Baron for a moment. The image of King’s Cross still pounded and danced in his head, scarcely less active than the mass of ghosts in front of him. “Because they could have gone on killing us and we couldn’t defend ourselves.”  
  
“ _Defend_ yourselves.” The Baron’s voice rose to a chilling howl. “Not destroy them!”  
  
Harry would have answered, but the group of ghosts in front of him was breaking apart again. He could understand, now, why the Baron had known about lots of smaller spirits piling in to Colin and driving him crazy. It looked as though the Baron contained a lot of separate ghosts as well, though he might have been able to keep them contained under one dominant personality.  
  
Now half those ghosts shot towards Harry, and the other half towards the one behind him who had cast the spell that had cleaved one of the Baron’s people.  _Draco,_ Harry was almost sure. Narcissa wouldn’t have defended him that way.  
  
Which meant he was alive. And Harry had no intention of letting the Baron’s personalities do anything else to him.  
  
All the time, the image of King’s Cross Station had been in his head, pure and white. Harry had held onto it without really knowing why he had, only that something about it was right. Maybe he had known that, as the one place he had seen when he  _himself_ went into death, it was also the fact about the afterlife that he knew best.  
  
And the Master of Death could imprison ghosts instead of destroying them. Harry would have to thank the Baron for giving him the hint.  
  
He spread his hands, and breathed out.  
  
*  
  
Draco was staggering from the effects of his spell as he came up behind Harry. He wished he could move faster, to make sure he was right at Harry’s side before the Baron tried striking at him again, but he couldn’t, and that was all there was to it. What mattered most was that he had almost completed the journey when he saw the ghosts rushing towards him.  
  
Draco grimaced and lifted his wand. He had learned the spell he’d already used to stop  _one_ maddened ghost. He wasn’t sure he could adapt it to confront multiple ones, although he also supposed he would have to try.  
  
“ _Stop_.”  
  
Draco heard the voice with his ears, and with his body. It rang in his blood and made his spirit quiver suddenly in what seemed like a cage of bones and organs, holding and imprisoning. Draco winced and placed a hand against his side. His spirit was lunging and bucking like a horse to get out, and he went to his knees as he fought the temptation to let it go. What  _was_ the body but a prison? The soul was the enduring part.  
  
But when he lifted his head, he saw he wasn’t the only one on the battlefield who was having trouble resisting the voice, and far from the worst-affected.  
  
Harry was holding his wand in the air, turning it back and forth, sketching out what looked like a transparent prison wall in front of him. The ghosts were flowing towards it. For a second, squinting at it, Draco caught a glimpse of a dazzling flash of white. He supposed he could be seeing the inside of the prison Harry had prepared for the ghosts, and he turned away defensively, hunching his face into his shoulder.  
  
The air around him seemed to shriek and tremble, and there was a sucking sensation that Draco gripped the grass to avoid following. When Draco could lift his head and look around again, the world seemed much quieter.  
  
And there were no ghosts in sight except a shadowy, enraged outline hovering in front of Harry, saying something that was too faint to be heard.  
  
Draco slowly fought his way back to his feet and limped up behind Harry. Harry put a hand on his shoulder without looking around. Draco would have liked more acknowledgment than that, but he could appreciate that Harry was dealing with a situation here. He leaned on Harry’s back instead, and watched.  
  
“You do not know what you have done!” the ghost wailed, sounding like the distant whistle of the Hogwarts Express. “I am essential to containing Peeves and other, more dangerous ghosts here! Let me go at once!”  
  
“So that’s why you were so sure you could bind Colin.” Harry’s voice and face were both distant. “You’d done it before. You do it all the time.” He closed his eyes, and his muscles trembled once, like something was swimming through them. “I have to have your word that you won’t attack me or anyone else living.”  
  
“I will make no such promise.”  
  
“Then I’ll hold you exiled in King’s Cross Station for good.”  
  
Draco blinked.  _King’s Cross Station? What good would that do, if the Bloody Baron could attack any kid who started to come to Hogwarts?_ But he said nothing, because he thought distracting Harry at this point would be a bad thing.  
  
The Bloody Baron rippled back and forth in front of Draco. Draco hoped that was a good thing, that the Bloody Baron was reconsidering his suicidal attempt to attack Harry, but he didn’t know if it was. He leaned nearer and nearer to Harry, though, letting more and more of his weight rest on him.  
  
Harry shifted nearer, as well, and Draco felt a smile light his face. It was good to know that he could offer some support to Harry, when so far he had mainly been a liability outside of casting one spell.  
  
“I bound the Bard for you,” the Baron’s whispery voice said at last. “You owe me more gratitude than this.”  
  
“You would have let someone die, on your watch. Someone you promised to protect.” Harry’s voice descended to a buzz that sounded as if he was a hive full of bees. “I don’t owe you anything when you broke your sworn word.”  
  
The Baron flashed a single, dazzling light that made Draco want to hide his eyes, but he knew the Baron might be watching, and so he held still. At long last, the Baron’s voice whispered, “He was too strong. I could not bind him.”  
  
“Then why should I let  _any_ of you out of King’s Cross?” Harry’s voice was strained, but he hadn’t lowered the Cloak or the wand yet, and Draco doubted he would. His arm muscles were bulging, and he looked as if he was having less trouble controlling the magic than he had a short while ago. “I should keep Colin there to make sure that he’s bound and not tormented. He’s drifting in whiteness, along with every one of your selves except the one talking to me now. Less torture than keeping him here and forbidding him vengeance.”  
  
Another flash of light; Draco had expected it this time, and didn’t blink. After a moment long enough to hurt, the Baron’s voice growled, “Let me go, and I will bind them again, and not let them attack you.”  
  
“What about you attacking Narcissa and Draco?” Harry asked instantly. “No, sorry. I don’t believe it.”  
  
The Baron’s central point, or speaking voice, or whatever one should call it, drifted back and forth. Harry watched it without moving. Draco leaned on him and sighed. He felt as if Harry was a wall he could shelter behind, a friend that would never betray him, a stout shoulder for any time of need. That was a little silly to feel about anyone, because people would let him down through no fault of their own. But he felt it anyway. If the situation had been less dangerous, he thought he could have gone to sleep.  
  
“Then I will prevent them from attacking you, and not attack them either, if you let the other ghosts go,” the Baron said at last.  
  
“And not follow through with Colin’s murderous impulses if relatives of Death Eaters come to school here?” Harry countered instantly. “Or come to visit, or enter the school for any reason.”  
  
The Baron paused. “I do not let other ghosts I have imprisoned escape my sway like that.”  
  
“You let one attack Draco.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows, but after he thought about it for a moment, he could see what Harry meant. The Baron had apparently had no trouble containing all the other ghosts that made up Creevey, even though there must be dozens of them if all the victims on the battlefield had truly blended with him. But then one had slipped through, and had made for Draco, the person Creevey had most wanted to kill in the last little while?  
  
No. Draco didn’t believe the excuse either, when he thought about it. He settled back against Harry with a satisfied grunt.  
  
“Very well,” said the Baron, and his voice was low and full of hatred. “I will bind the ghosts again, the ones that make up me and the ones that make up the Bard, and keep them from attacking you or Malfoy or anyone else related to Death Eaters. But in return, Master of Death, you will make sure that you do not kill another ghost.”  
  
“Done.” Harry’s voice already sounded lighter, easier. It was probably something he would have promised anyway, Draco thought, lifting his head and opening his eyes to watch as Harry lowered the Elder Wand.  
  
Shapes began to fade back into sight, silvery shapes with variously-defined heads and eyes and hands and arms. They flew back into the Baron the minute they formed, though, and he was already fading himself. The flashes of light and the light that almost made Draco sick to look at had gone.  
  
“You should not be the Master of Death,” the Baron’s voice said abruptly. “You do not respect it enough.” For one moment, his head and shimmering blood and eyes were the same as usual, staring at Harry with such dislike that Draco shivered and grabbed him around the waist. “No true Master of Death would have destroyed a ghost.”  
  
“No ghost who proposes to care for Slytherins would have let another ghost attack one.”  
  
The Baron didn’t bother responding, but simply faded from sight. Draco sighed, shivered, and asked Harry in a murmur, “Is it over now?”  
  
Harry turned to him, draped his arms over Draco’s shoulders as if Draco was the one holding him up instead of the other way around, and said, “It’s over for  _right_ now. I don’t know what’s going to happen with having to confirm that the Bard was a ghost and we essentially let him go.” He turned his head to the side and met Narcissa’s eyes. Draco wasn’t sure what expression his mother’s face held, but he thought he could guess. “For now, though? Over.”  
  
And he began to sag and tremble, his skin as cold as Draco’s had felt after the stabbing he’d received. Draco cuddled him close, and felt his mother come in to support Harry on the other side, and slowly, at a limp, they began moving towards the school.


	20. In Silence

“I’ve never heard of the Bloody Baron doing anything like that.” McGonagall’s eyes were shadowed as she stood looking at the Pensieve on her desk, where Harry had put his memories of the battle. He had thought it was only fair to let the Headmistress look, just in case the Baron became a threat to her school later. “Perhaps Dumbledore had a different working relationship with him. I don’t know.”  
  
Harry kept diplomatically silent. He had escorted Narcissa and Draco back to Grimmauld Place, called on Hermione to watch over them, and then come back to Hogwarts. His back was aching where it pressed against the chair, and his hand felt chilled. He squeezed it between his knees and grimaced a little.  
  
McGonagall seemed to come abruptly back to remembering him. “Mr. Potter! I’m sorry. Are you all right?”  
  
“Aftereffects from the battle with the Baron.” Harry gave her a tired smile. “I’ll get over it.”  
  
He had never used those powers before. And while everything seemed to have worked out and he thought he had used them correctly, it was still staggering. He could feel aftershocks and shudders working their way through his blood, as though he had dropped a hammer on a metal floor and he was still hearing the echoes.  
  
“Yes. Well.” McGonagall sighed as she sat down behind her desk. “I’m sorry this happened. We’ve always been able to trust the Bloody Baron to handle Peeves and other troublesome ghosts before. I don’t know why he changed his mind.”  
  
Harry was quiet, thinking. Then he said, “I don’t really know, either. I’m not an expert on ghosts, and I’m a dangerously inexpert Master of Death. But I can tell you what I  _think_ happened.”  
  
“What?” McGonagall leaned forwards eagerly.  
  
Harry blinked for a moment, until he remembered that she still had to run a school with the Bloody Baron in it. It wasn’t surprising that she wanted a way to try and clear up the possible danger. “He bound Colin—the Bard of Morning’s Hope. He mingled with him for a while. I saw—it was strange, but it looked like he surrounded him. At least some of his ghosts contained some of Colin’s ghosts.”  
  
“Yes? And?” McGonagall looked like someone still waiting for the punchline of a joke.  
  
“The ghosts that mingled with Colin’s spirit drove him insane,” Harry said softly. “He became vengeful and determined to take down even Death Eaters who hadn’t killed him, in a way he never would have been in life. I think it’s possible that the Bloody Baron picked up some of those motives from Colin. Maybe he didn’t let the one ghost who tried to kill Draco go deliberately, but he might have done it because he was so influenced, at the moment, by the thought of letting Death Eaters die.”  
  
McGonagall hesitated once. Then she nodded. “That’s entirely possible. Like you, I don’t want to say that it was definitely the answer, but it might be.”  
  
Harry smiled tiredly. “It might be.” He closed his eyes. “If the Bloody Baron starts doing something that concerns you, you’ll call me right away?”  
  
“We will.” There was the sound of her footsteps coming around the desk, and Harry blinked open his eyes to find her right in front of him. “And now, Auror Potter, I think you ought to go home before you fall asleep.”  
  
Harry laughed and got to his feet. He didn’t waver, but he thought that might only be true because his hand was locked firmly on the arm of the chair. “You’re right. Thanks for listening to me, Professor McGonagall.”  
  
“I told you to call me Minerva.” For a moment, she stood looking at him in a way that Harry wanted to point out wasn’t very helpful in getting Harry to call her by her first name, and then she nodded. “I think you should make a point to find out what it really means to be Master of Death, as soon as possible.”  
  
“How?” Harry asked, a little exasperated. That was the same thing Hermione had told him after hearing how he’d held the Baron back, and Harry had the same answer now. “There’s not exactly books on it. Supposedly, no one has ever held all three Deathly Hallows before.”  
  
“I suggest you learn by practicing,” said McGonagall calmly. “Go out into a place strong with the presence of death, perhaps a graveyard, and see what happens when you attempt to call upon your power.”  
  
“That could cause some kind of an explosion or something, too.”  
  
“Then a graveyard a long distance away from everyone else.”  
  
Harry snorted. At least she was doing a good job of making him feel better, and he suspected that was what she wanted. “Thanks, M—Minerva.” He clasped her hand and turned for the door.  
  
“If you’d prefer to use my Floo connection, then you may.”  
  
Harry hesitated, testing the wobble of his muscles in his own mind, and how much his head was starting ache, as though someone had driven a spike of ice into his skull above his eyebrow, and how much he wanted to get back and see Draco. He ended up nodding. “Thanks.”  
  
*  
  
“I just don’t understand how that could have happened,” Granger was saying for the fortieth time. “Colin was such a  _nice_ boy.”  
  
Draco lounged in his chair with a blanket under his back, the blanket heated with a Warming Charm, and didn’t say anything. He had told her what the Bloody Baron had said about various ghosts blending with Creevey’s and changing his nature, and Granger still acted as though no one else could offer a theory because she hadn’t come up with that one.  
  
“But I suppose death changes us all,” Granger finally mused, and Draco opened his eyes, startled. She was standing near the mantel in the drawing room, running one hand over it and frowning to herself. It seemed that what she need was to be left alone until she could talk herself into believing the idea.  
  
“I’m just sorry it was Colin who paid that price,” Granger finished, and turned around and gave Draco an uncomfortably piercing glance. “And you.”  
  
Draco shrugged, awkward in his silence. He hadn’t expected Granger to offer  _any_ sympathy at all, which meant he didn’t know how to deal with it.  
  
“Thank you, Miss Granger.” Narcissa was sitting upright in front of the fire, Transfiguring another blanket she could attach a Warming Charm to from one of the ragged old curtains in their upstairs bedroom. She still sounded as though she was hosting the perfect dinner party at the Manor. “Of course I would prefer to have my husband alive, but knowing we have justice for him will help us in healing.”  
  
Granger smiled as if those commonplaces relaxed her, too. “I can understand that.”  
  
She might have spoken further, but the fire flared, and she had to move abruptly away from it as someone Flooed through. That turned out to be Harry, who caught himself with a neat little spin when he would have tumbled on the hearth. Granger smiled at him and dropped her reaching hand.  
  
“Everything all right here?” Harry looked around as though he thought the ceiling might have fallen in on them without him there to catch it.  
  
“Everything is fine, Auror Potter.” Narcissa looked up. Draco watched her for a moment. It was too much to say that there was  _warmth_ in her face when she looked at Harry, but that was okay, as far as Draco was concerned. His mother rarely showed warmth to anyone. And if she could muster courtesy for their Muggleborn baby-sitter, she could do more than that for someone who had avenged Lucius’s murder and saved Draco’s life and hers. “I appreciate what you’ve done.”  
  
“Is everything settled at Hogwarts?” Granger asked, immediately, before Draco could say anything. “The Bloody Baron is under control again? And what about Colin?”  
  
“He still has Colin imprisoned, as far as I can tell,” said Harry, so quietly that Granger looked at him in concern. Draco, thinking he knew more about where the quietness came from, waited. “I don’t know for sure. But I do think that imprisoning Colin’s multiple ghosts might have influenced him, and that might have been why he let the ghost through that attacked you, Draco.”  
  
Draco nodded. He found that he didn’t want to say anything at the moment, that he couldn’t even remember what it would have been. He just admired Harry’s face and the rough way he combed his hair back from his ears instead.  
  
“Well, as long as Colin’s ghost is somewhat laid.” Granger’s face was full of sadness. “I wish there was something else we could have done for him.”  
  
Draco held back his own commentary, only reaching out to adjust the blanket behind his shoulders, but he did think that Granger was always wasting compassion on  _anyone_ but living wizards. First house-elves, and then murderous ghosts. She didn’t seem to care much that “Colin” had been behind numerous deaths, and had tried to be behind more.  
  
“So do I,” said Harry, but shook his head. “If the Bloody Baron could hardly contain him, I wouldn’t have wanted to try. I would either have ended up letting someone else get hurt, or I would have had to destroy him.”  
  
“That’s what the Master of Death does?” Granger sounded horrified.  
  
“It’s one thing I can do. I need to practice to learn about other things.” Harry grinned suddenly. “McGonagall was suggesting a graveyard a long way from anything else.”  
  
Granger raised her eyebrows. “That might be a good attitude, actually.” She glanced with a smile at Harry. “Is there anything else you need me to do here? I don’t think anyone will try to attack you lot now, but I can send some of the Unspeakables with some of the new spells to guard you if you want. They’re anxious to try those spells out.”  
  
Draco flinched. He could just imagine what it would be like to be surrounded by trainee Unspeakables. Probably less hostile, but no less dangerous, than being surrounded by Aurors who had agreed with the Bard.  
  
Harry seemed to pick up on Draco’s horror. He coughed lightly. “Thanks, Hermione, but like you say, we’re all right now.”  
  
“Good.” Granger hugged Harry once, nodded at Draco and Narcissa, and went through the Floo.   
  
Harry turned to Draco. “How are you feeling?”   
  
“Still cold,” said Narcissa, which again spared Draco from answering. He was getting more to the point where he didn’t want to respond, only wait for the moments when they could be alone. “I am making sure he stays warm and receives warm meals. Ghostly cold is partially symbolic, as we saw with the ice that the Bard inflicted on my husband.” For a moment only, her eyes closed. “If we counter it with warmth, then my son should be fine.”  
  
Draco leaned his head back on the chair and looked up at Harry.  
  
Amazingly, Harry seemed to have read from his gaze what he wanted. He caught Draco’s arm and said gently, “I think Draco’s tired, Mrs. Malfoy. Can I take him upstairs? I’ll make sure he rests.” He looked at Draco again. “And stays warm.”  
  
 _After we do some other things first,_ Draco thought, his heartbeat picking up.  _And during those other things, I’ll be warm._  
  
Draco couldn’t believe his mother was unaware of what Harry meant, but perhaps she kept her head bowed partially so she wouldn’t need to acknowledge it. “Yes. As long as he  _rests_ afterwards.”  
  
Harry smiled at Narcissa and turned to look up the stairs. Draco moved to his side and laid a hand on his shoulder that made Harry tilt his head in silent invitation. Draco smiled as they climbed up the stairs.  
  
His back was warm again.  
  
*  
  
Harry had invited this knowing what would happen, but it was still a shock when Draco turned to him the minute they were up the stairs, clasped his shoulders, and slammed him back against the wall, kissing him hard enough to numb Harry’s lips.  
  
But it only took that moment before Harry was kissing back, and slipping his hands around Draco’s waist, caressing his ribs. He thought of how easily that skin could have torn, how easily he could have lost Draco to a ghost’s attack, either the last ghost’s or the Bard’s before they had figured out he was Colin.  
  
All of that made him kiss still harder.  
  
Draco pulled away from him before things could go much further, and flashed him a sharp smile as he pulled his shirt over his head. Harry discovered  _he_ was shivering, as if being starved of Draco’s body warmth for even a second was the equivalent of being stabbed by a cold ghost. He reached out and gathered Draco close, kissing him again, but let Draco pull his shirt off in turn, so their bare chests were touching.  
  
It was the best thing Harry had ever felt. He ran one hand over the curve of Draco’s shoulder blade, and thought again how it might have ended, and tugged Draco against him until he lost his footing and flailed at Harry’s shoulders in turn to stand upright. And Harry still kissed him, and eased him back, and kissed him again, and reached for his cock.  
  
Draco let out a breathy groan. He was almost silent, really, and Harry would have found that creepy, except that he was sure it was deliberate. Draco pressed into his hand and found Harry’s cock with the head of his.  
  
That was deliberate, too. Had to be.  
  
Harry tilted his head back and worked his throat to get some air in. He wasn’t destined to get much, as Draco immediately kissed him again, and then sucked on his neck.  
  
Harry adjusted his grip on Draco so their cocks were touching once more. That was good. He was going to get some more of  _that_.  
  
And counter thoughts about how he had almost lost Draco forever with the fact of his hips and warmth and thrusting erection, and replace memories of Draco lying lonely and cold, ghosts filling the air around him, with memories of pleasure.  
  
Draco smiled at him before his mouth fell slightly open and he grunted, banging enthusiastically enough into Harry that Harry’s head flew backwards and hit the door. Harry made an indignant noise.  
  
“Sorry,” Draco gasped, before he began sucking on Harry’s neck again. Harry turned him slightly so that they could both have what they wanted, Draco soft skin beneath his lips and tongue, and Harry their cocks rubbing together.  
  
“Not a p-problem,” Harry said, and it wasn’t, although his muscles were straining and his head hurt from being banged into the doorway. He would have stopped already if it was really a problem. His fingers curled into Draco’s shoulders and down his back, and his head ached more and his sight blurred.  
  
The moment of orgasm had always been a surprise for him, a sharp spike of pleasure and excitement that then dropped him. This time, he felt it building, probably because Draco was there, and Harry had had to—  
  
Had had to know where Draco was at all times in the past few days, had had to know where he stood and how he breathed and whether he would panic when the Bard suddenly attacked—  
  
Had had to know some things about him that might not be important to some people, but were to Harry.  
  
And on that thought, he came, and Draco followed him after a few more seconds of sucking and thrusting. He was the one who swayed, and Harry was careful to hold him up.  _He_ had the doorframe behind him. He was steadier than Draco.   
  
He was Draco’s guardian, he thought. That was something he could do, and happily. He had promised Draco’s mother that he would keep Draco warm and rested, after all. He smiled and urged Draco into the bedroom.  
  
Draco stopped swaying and stood inconveniently straight a few seconds later, nearly making Harry stumble as he tried to escort him. Then he turned his head. “I’m not tired, you know,” he announced, his voice sounding creaky. “I’m also not as cold as my mother thinks I am. I was earlier, but I’m not now. And—”  
  
He yawned in a way that nearly broke his jaw. Harry shook his head and settled Draco on the bed. “You’re not as cold as she thought, but you are more tired,” he said. “And I’m the one who tired you out. I’m the one who should make sure that you’re rested.” He waved his wand to clean up the wetness in Draco’s trousers, and slid a pillow behind him.  
  
Draco looked uncertain, but then his face took on a stubborn look that was almost familiar. “I’m doing this to oblige  _you_ ,” he said, as he leaned back. “Not my mother.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“You could  _sound_  as if you believed me,” Draco said, and closed his eyes, and almost passed out.  
  
Harry stood there for a second, smiling at him. Then he let the smile go, and watched Draco breathing, and thought again about how easily that breathing could have stopped.  
  
Yes, it was the sort of thought he had had before about the victims he was guarding and how easily they could have died if he’d misstepped. But with Draco, it was different.  
  
And he knew exactly why.  
  
 _I never want that to happen again. I’ll need to find some private time and space to practice my powers as Master of Death, just like McGonagall suggested._  
  
He curled up behind Draco, more than willing to both share his warmth and share Draco’s rest. He would think about it, but not for right now.


	21. Conversing With the Dead

Kingsley sighed as though someone had taken away all his air and sank slowly back into the chair behind his desk. His eyes were watching Harry with a desperation that made Harry want to wince.  
  
But he reminded himself that he had solved the problem of the Bard’s persistence, and made sure that he wouldn’t come back and claim any other victims, either. He waited, and Kingsley finally nodded and lifted his hand in a weird gesture, as if he was going to bless Harry.  
  
“Who would have thought a ghost was a problem?” he asked in a mutter. “All of the ones I know have coexisted with humans for years without hurting them.”  
  
Harry smiled tightly, and didn’t say anything. He was starting to think that was because the violent ghosts got absorbed or imprisoned by stronger ones, but he didn’t want to involve Kingsley in a philosophical debate. The point was that Harry had succeeded in safeguarding the Malfoys and stopping the Bard, the way he had told Kingsley he could. He didn’t need to  _worry_ about anything else.   
  
“Well.” Kingsley returned to himself and looked hard at Harry. “Not that you don’t deserve a holiday after all you’ve done, but I did hope you would consent to appear at the official announcement about stopping the Bard.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I need to do a few other things on the same day.” Kingsley looked curious, but at least he didn’t interrupt. “But I want to be there when you explain this to Dennis.”  
  
Kingsley blinked. “Explain? In what way? I thought you said that he already must have suspected his brother’s ghost was the Bard.”  
  
“I don’t know how much he really suspected,” Harry said shortly. “And after all, he deserves to know what happened to Colin in the end.”  
  
Kingsley shrugged with one shoulder. “No one else is dying to talk to him. He’ll be here a while yet, of course, with the information on the smuggling case that you found.”  
  
“Of  _course_ ,” Harry said, and Kingsley turned away from his smile.  
  
“Good work, Potter,” he said, busy with paperwork once more. “You’re one of the few people who didn’t let yourself be blinded by the Malfoys’ reputation in one direction or the other.”  
  
It was useless to argue with that kind of Ministry politics, so Harry simply nodded and left. He strode through the corridors in the direction of the holding cells, and saw a few people staring at him. All of them were Aurors he wouldn’t have trusted within a mile of Draco and Narcissa while the Bard was still active, so he stared back, and just like Kingsley, they turned away. Harry rolled his eyes.  
  
 _You can’t present yourself as in favor of justice until it applies to people you don’t like,_ he thought, as he came to Dennis’s holding cell and knocked once in the pattern that would tell any visiting Aurors he was someone here to visit the prisoner.  _Just the same way that you can’t apply it more harshly to people you_ do  _like because someone might accuse you of favoritism._  
  
Harry’s lesson to himself in the wisdom of the universe wasn’t interrupted by any comments from inside, except a low, rough voice that might have been Dennis’s. “Who is that?”  
  
“Harry,” said Harry, because Dennis was someone he intended to call by his first name, even after all this, and opened the door. The protections on it briefly jumped like stung cats, then calmed down. Harry stepped into the cell, shut the door behind him, and engaged the protections before he looked at Dennis. It was necessary.  
  
Dennis sat in the single chair usually provided in this kind of cell, a week-old  _Daily Prophet_ spread in front of him. He was combing through it with the kind of roughness that meant he didn’t care if the pages ripped, and he looked at Harry like someone starved of news. “What’s happening with the Bard?”  
  
“The Bloody Baron captured Colin and he’s holding him in a captivity that will involve keeping him from hurting anyone else,” Harry told him. He didn’t sit down. He didn’t intend to stay that long. “It’s over.”  
  
Dennis shut his eyes. “What will happen to him?”  
  
“I just told you.”  
  
“But you didn’t—you didn’t say how long he’s going to stay imprisoned.” Dennis opened his eyes again and shook his head.  
  
“That’s because I don’t know,” said Harry. “But considering he’s a ghost and the Bloody Baron is a ghost, it might be centuries.”  
  
He had, he thought, told only the truth, but Dennis flinched and turned away with one hand over his face. Harry sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, also only the truth. “I don’t think the Bloody Baron will really torment him. He cares more about ghosts than he does about the living.” He hesitated, and decided that he might as well tell Dennis the rest. “And the ghost you were protecting and helping wasn’t really your brother alone.”  
  
Dennis dropped his hand, but still didn’t turn around to face Harry. “I know my brother’s presence. I know what—what he wanted.”  
  
“But he absorbed other ghosts from the battlefield,” said Harry. “Other ghosts who might not have become spirits on their own, or remained for as long. That’s why he was so vengeful against people who hadn’t harmed him. He was hunting down Death Eaters in general because so many different people were part of him.”  
  
Dennis turned around. “And so you took away the only chance at justice that most of those spirits might ever know.”  
  
“Why is murder justice?” Harry shook his head. “Besides, sooner or later he would have run out of victims who were directly connected to the ghosts that made him up. Or he wouldn’t have been able to kill some of them because they were already dead in the battle. Then what?”  
  
“It would still have been justice.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering to argue with you about this,” he muttered, and turned to the door. “The ghosts had already reached the point of killing random people who didn’t have anything to do with their deaths, I think. The Bard attacked Narcissa Malfoy, and the Ministry  _proved_ that she didn’t raise her wand against anyone in the Battle.”  
  
“She was still on the wrong side. She could have been indirectly responsible for someone’s death.”  
  
“But we don’t know whose,” said Harry quietly. He looked at Dennis. “You’re the lucky one, you know. You’ll be tried for what you did, not what someone imagines you did or thinks you did or ‘just knows’ you did because of your blood.”  
  
Dennis shook his head. His face was composed, but in hard lines that told Harry how little he had listened, how little he had learned. “When you finally wake up to the injustice that Muggleborns face in this society, I’ll be waiting.”  
  
“I would say that I’m waiting for the same thing with you in regards to the injustice of killing anyone who kills someone else, but I know you’re not going to wake up,” said Harry tiredly, and walked over to the door. Once again, the protections flamed, calmed down when they felt who he was, and let him out.  
  
Dennis tried to tell him something, but Harry shut the door and shut the words out with it. He wasn’t interested in listening to Dennis anymore. He had the truth, and that would have to be enough.  
  
Now, Harry had a few other things he wanted to do.  
  
*  
  
“Strange. I’d have thought you’d leave sneaking out after dark with your Invisibility Cloak behind at Hogwarts.”  
  
Harry jumped enough that Draco winced, reaching out a concerned hand to stop him from bumping into the wall. But he didn’t, and he didn’t knock anything else down, instead turning around with a glare. “What are you doing out of bed?” he whispered. “You know that Healer today said a ghost’s touch could be fatal without rest!”  
  
“I’ve had plenty of rest. I slept the whole day except for that appointment with the Healer.” Draco folded his arms and batted his lashes a little at Harry. “Now. Are you going to answer my question? Or are we are back to the petty secret-keeping that was  _also_ part of Hogwarts?”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Not—petty. I would have asked you to come if I thought it was safe.”  
  
“I thought we were staying here because it wasn’t safe, because you were afraid that some adherent of the Bard might be seeking to finish his work.” That was the excuse Harry had given for inviting Draco and Narcissa to stay at his house, anyway. Draco had been happy enough at the time not to question it further. “Now you’re sneaking out and leaving us?”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and spent a moment working one hand into the collar of the Invisibility Cloak. Draco just waited. Harry would have to crack and explain what he had meant sooner or later.  
  
“I found a graveyard where I was going to test my powers,” Harry said, and opened his eyes. “I was afraid of telling you because I thought you would want to come with me. And I don’t know what’s going to happen if I have a living audience.”  
  
“You have someone who can tell you when you’re going too far and exhausting yourself,” Draco said lightly, although his skin crawled. He wouldn’t have done this for anyone but his parents or Harry. He placed a hand on Harry’s hand where it was pulling at the Cloak and stopped it. “And someone you can show those powers to.”  
  
Harry smiled shakily. “I wasn’t really counting on an audience.”  
  
“Then why did you want me to come with you?”  
  
Harry blinked. “Because I want you with me a lot.”  
  
Draco felt as though someone had put him in a warm bath.  _The Healer was wrong. This is what I_ really  _need to heal me._  
  
“Lead the way,” he said, and Summoned his own cloak while Harry scribbled a swift note for Narcissa, and strengthened some of the wards on the house. They wouldn’t have held back the Bard, but there was no Bard anymore.  
  
*  
  
Harry paced slowly along the sturdy stone wall that surrounded the graveyard. It looked as though it had stood a thousand years, and maybe it had. Harry wasn’t an expert at sensing the age of graveyards or ghosts, no matter what the powers of the Deathly Hallows had turned him into.   
  
“Ready?” he asked quietly, glancing at Draco.  
  
Draco’s face was a pale blur in the darkness, which was broken only by the lights of their wands and the lights of the village a distance away beyond the trees. Harry thought that it had once been built closer to the graveyard, but the only houses he’d seen near it were all abandoned. “Ready.”  
  
Harry nodded, faced the graves—most of which were simple headstones and crosses, with here and there the larger bulk of a tomb—and drew the Elder Wand.  
  
The darkness suddenly seemed colder and more restless around him. Harry would have said  _alive,_ but he didn’t think that was the point. He could hear voices and whispers and hisses on the outer edge of understanding. There might have been a hint of Parseltongue in some of the voices, but he honestly didn’t think so.  
  
“I want to see a ghost,” Harry said. Maybe he would be able to command the spirits to rise by will eventually, but he was working almost blind on this, and it seemed simpler to follow what he knew. Spoken magic was less complicated than non-verbal magic.  
  
The Elder Wand twitched as though someone had tied a string to it, and Harry instinctively tightened his grip on it. The Resurrection Stone in his pocket uttered a low, steady hum. The Cloak fluttered out and settled again on his back like the touch of an urgent, heavy hand.  
  
A spirit wandered towards him, staring at him curiously.  
  
Harry swallowed. This ghost didn’t look like Colin, or the ones around Hogwarts. It was less transparent, for one thing, with silvery-dark eyes that seemed to look past him as well as at him. It seemed to be of an old woman, although the whole body was so pale it was hard to be sure. Harry thought he could see wrinkles in her face and that her hair was whiter than the rest of her, though.  
  
The woman stopped at the stone wall and stood there with her folded arms resting on top of it. “I haven’t seen the night in a long time,” she said, a small tremble in her voice. “There’s no night there.” She tilted her head back, and Harry saw a ripple fall down her back, as if her hair was growing longer. “No stars.”  
  
Harry had no desire to really question her about where spirits went. He thought it might be the kind of knowledge he wasn’t supposed to know, as the Master of Death. He asked quietly, “What was your name?”  
  
“Esther Matthews,” the woman said at once, and looked back at him. “You’re a young one to summon me.”  
  
“Has someone summoned you before?” Harry asked. He could feel Draco breathing tensely behind him, and he knew Draco was probably thinking the same thing. Was there another Master of Death out there?  
  
“Oh, no,” said Esther. “I just knew the one who did would be older.”  
  
Harry blinked and glanced back at Draco, but Draco shrugged, looking as lost as he did. If there was a wizarding story that explained this, Harry thought, Draco must not know it.  
  
“Er,” said Harry, and realized that he had been bracing as if the first ghost he met through using his powers this way was automatically going to be as hostile as Colin. He sought for a topic to talk about. “Do you like death?”  
  
“It’s not about liking it,” said Esther. “It’s just what happens.” She looked around and smiled. “But I do like seeing the world again. Hasn’t changed much, has it?”  
  
“I don’t know,” said Harry, wondering if she thought the electric lights were more stars. On the other hand, maybe she hadn’t lived centuries ago. “When did you, er, die?”  
  
Esther thought about it, then laughed. The sound made a soft prickling like mouse’s claws run up and down Harry’s spine. “Can’t remember the year. Funny, isn’t it? The thing that happens to everyone, and I can remember when other people died, but not me.” She shook her head one more time, and leaned over to the side as if she wanted to study a pattern in the tree branches behind Harry’s head.  
  
“Yeah, it’s strange,” Harry said. He wondered if he would remember the year of his death when  _he_ died. It was an uncomfortable thing to think about. He coughed and managed to speak through the tightness in his throat and chest. “Why do you think you remember your name when you don’t remember anything else?”  
  
“It’s carved on my stone, isn’t it.” Esther made a motion back into the graveyard without really appearing to move. It was more like another ripple and shimmer that ran through her. “Hard to forget something like that.”  
  
Harry felt his cheeks burning. He coughed again. He supposed he would have to ask the questions he dreaded, because not asking them would make him a poor Master of Death. “What’s it like? Where are you now?”  
  
“No night. No stars.” Esther leaned around him even more obviously. “No trees. It’s—endless.” She spread her hands when Harry stared at her. “Can’t describe endlessness more than that. That’s why it was invented, the word. Endless. That’s just what it  _is_.”  
  
Harry wondered idly for a moment whether the difference between Esther and the Bloody Baron was the difference between Muggle and wizarding ghosts, or simply because the Bloody Baron had come back and stayed around on his own, while he had summoned Esther.  
  
“If I asked you what you want most,” he said, “what would that be?”  
  
Esther looked around for long enough without answering him that Harry started to wonder if she was going to say she wanted to stay here and look at the world. Then she shook her head with that rippling motion again and looked at Harry.  
  
“Endlessness,” she said. “It’s nice enough here, but it’s not endless.”  
  
Harry nodded. He supposed he hadn’t done too bad, for summoning his first ghost. He hadn’t hurt her, and he certainly hadn’t destroyed her. He raised the Elder Wand and murmured, “Return to your rest.”  
  
There was a surprised expression on Esther’s face for a minute, as if she had thought he would do something else. Then her eyes slipped shut, and she appeared to drift sideways along the wall. In seconds, she was a thin, tattered sprig of mist; in a minute, she was gone.  
  
Harry stood there shivering until Draco came forwards and put a hand on his arm. Harry turned around and buried his head in Draco’s side.  
  
“I know she wasn’t threatening or anything like that,” Harry whispered. He was colder now than Esther’s presence had made him. “But to have that power, and yet…I couldn’t even understand her answers to my questions. I don’t know what to do now.” His head was spinning and pounding.  
  
“You’ll get more used to it in time,” Draco said soothingly, as if he knew. Well, maybe he did, Harry thought, and slowly straightened up. “Come on, now. My mother will wonder where we are if we stay much longer.”  
  
Harry took a single look back at the graveyard before they Apparated. It looked utterly ordinary, the stones gleaming a little amongst the shadows, and that was all. He couldn’t even tell which one was Esther’s.  
  
 _But maybe,_ he thought slowly,  _that isn’t so bad, if it teaches me that I have a lot to learn._  
  
 _I mean, I knew that already. But it’s good to be reminded.  
_


	22. Seeking

“Mr. Potter! A minute of your time!”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes enormously as he turned around. He hadn’t been at the initial announcement of the Bard’s discovery and capture, but it seemed that some of the reporters had decided he was fair game anyway. And Kingsley had never said that he would keep Harry’s name out of the articles.  
  
“What?” he asked the man who had bustled up behind him. He was wearing a pair of blue robes so shiny and reflective that Harry caught a glimpse of his own disgusted scowl in them, and clutching a wand made of almost equally reflective shiny brown wood. He paused when he came close to Harry and stared at him.  
  
“I mean,” said the man, waving the wand and conjuring a camera and a piece of parchment along with the ink that he needed to use, “I want to know how you determined the identity of the Bard and captured him.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Minister Shacklebolt gave you all the detail that you needed in his conferences yesterday,” he said, and added, when the man started to open his mouth, “I  _know_ he did, because I heard the congratulations all over the place.”  
  
The man remained still for a second, examining Harry as if he couldn’t believe that he was serious, and then muttered, “But he didn’t give much detail. I thought you would be the one who could give me the  _real_ story…”  
  
“You have as much of the real story as you need.” Harry gave the man a smile that might look nasty. He didn’t particularly care if it did. “It means that you can go home and ponder on the fate of someone who was affected by the spirits of the dead and driven mad. It means that maybe you can think more about stopping wars than causing them.”  
  
“ _Causing_ them? I never—”  
  
“You cause unpleasantness by insisting on blaming me or praising me for a normal Auror job,” Harry cut in. “And the stories I saw yesterday weren’t about Colin and the way he suffered, as they should have been. They were about me and whether I was a hero and even had the  _right_ to suspect people who fought at the Battle of Hogwarts.”  
  
“You must admit, it was very unusual for a hero to suspect another hero…”  
  
The man’s voice trailed away under the weight of Harry’s stare. Harry snorted and turned around. “I have an important appointment to keep,” he said over his shoulder. “But don’t let me get in the way of fabricating stories. I know you will anyway. I just don’t have to help you.”  
  
He had barely got out of the Atrium when he heard footsteps behind him. Harry turned around, touching his wand, ready to lash out if he had to, but it was Ron, shaking his head and walking faster until he fell into line behind Harry.  
  
“I think you scared him enough, Harry. I’m surprised he didn’t have to cast a Freshening Charm on his pants.”  
  
Harry smiled faintly and shrugged a little as he turned towards the interrogation rooms. “You know how much I detest them.”  
  
“What brings you to the Ministry so early?” Ron had a voice that he seemed to think was sly. Harry and Hermione could both have told him otherwise, but they left it alone because that way, they knew when he was trying to get something past them. “I thought you’d be making sure Malfoy and Mum got home  _safe_.”  
  
“Wow,” said Harry solemnly. “I knew you were bad at innuendo, but I had no idea  _how_ bad.”  
  
Ron laughed. “Well, what have you given me to work with? A few relationships that the papers did more about than you did, and then you were dating my  _sister_.” Ron shuddered eloquently. “Anyway. I’m going to enjoy making fun of you as much as you made fun of me when I was staring off into the distance during that one meeting because I was thinking about Hermione’s eyes.”  
  
Harry grinned. He had to admit that that time, he’d made a lucky guess that Ron was thinking about Hermione; he hadn’t been sure. “What if I were to tell you that Draco does this thing with his lips where—”  
  
“No  _details_ , mate!”  
  
Harry laughed. “Anyway, I have to give details about that smuggling case they’re arresting Dennis for, and enough details about the Bard for them to decide if he was really obstructing justice or not. He did choose Veritaserum willingly.”  
  
Ron winced. “Kingsley  _is_ holding Dennis for the smuggling, then?”  
  
Harry rolled a shoulder. “Amazing what politics he’s willing to ignore when I’ve just handed him the political coup of capturing the most notorious murderer since Voldemort.”  
  
Ron flinched at the name, but it was absent. “I wish it didn’t have to be you, mate.”  
  
Harry smiled wearily. “I know, but what matters is that the Bard is gone and Dennis is in custody for the crimes that he  _did_ commit.”  
  
“And you have a Malfoy-friend.”  
  
Harry flipped Ron off and continued on his way to the interrogation rooms. Ron didn’t accompany him because he was leaning against the wall, wheezing with laughter at his own joke.  
  
 _And I have a Weasley-friend, and a Granger-friend,_ Harry thought, letting his smile fade only when he had his hand on the knob of the door.  _If I don’t have any Creevey-friends anymore, well, that’s the price I chose to pay_.  
  
*  
  
“You’re sure you want to do this?”  
  
Harry leaned over and gave Draco a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m sure that I want to do it with you, if that makes sense?”  
  
Draco grimaced and closed his eyes for a second. Then he nodded, and stepped back as Harry reached out and placed his hands gently in air on either side of him, as though he was pressing down masses of cloud.  
  
Harry had said that he had to speak to Creevey.  _Why_ was more than Draco could understand, but he respected Harry for wanting to do it anyway. And he was happier when Harry had told him that he didn’t think they had to go back to Hogwarts. Harry had been practicing steadily at his Master of Death powers ever since the night in the graveyard.  
  
He thought he could call Creevey to him.  
  
They were outside Number Twelve Grimmauld Place at the moment, but within the flickering, silvery-fire-powered wards that would specially defend Slytherins. Draco had thought it was best, although Harry had offered to go to the Manor if it would make Draco more comfortable about this.  
  
But those wards hadn’t been proof against the Bard. And Draco didn’t want the ghost that had killed his father near his house ever again.  
  
Harry gave a loud grunt and pushed down with his hands even harder, as though the clouds he had called were resisting him. Draco felt a cold touch on his forehead and cheek, less like a wind than a hand. He shivered, and then the cold swirled up in front of him and formed into the image of Creevey’s face.  
  
Draco stared. He had thought that Creevey was either trapped forever by the Bloody Baron or else mingled with so many other ghosts that there was no way Harry could isolate him. But no, there he was, drifting back and forth.  
  
Draco swallowed. He had been willing to let Harry try this because he had thought he wouldn’t succeed, honestly. It was beyond frightening that he had. Draco glanced at Harry.  
  
Harry was almost grey with exhaustion, but he stood on his feet and gazed calmly at Creevey, only shaking his head a little when Draco mouthed something at him about running. Draco couldn’t remember the words a minute after he said them, anyway. Harry inclined his head and murmured, “How are you, Colin?”  
  
Creevey blinked and drifted, lifted one hand and scrubbed the air as if polishing a window, and finally focused on Draco. A surge of hatred seemed to grip him when he did, and he made a motion as if he would dive forwards.  
  
Harry lifted a hand and twisted it, and Creevey stopped. Draco stood there, panting shallowly. He could see the sweat traveling down Harry’s face, onto his neck and the collar of his robes, gleaming in the light of the wards. He wondered if the distance he would have to sprint to the back door would be short enough to let him outrun an enraged ghost.  
  
 _If Harry loses control._ Harry hadn’t lost control yet.  
  
“Colin?” Harry whispered. “Draco didn’t kill you in the battle. Did he hurt you somehow? Why do you want to attack him?”  
  
Creevey was silent for a long second, twisting in the air as though he was on a hook. Then he jerked himself as if coming to a stop and said, “If I kill him, then I can go and tell my brother I did a good job.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes as if in pain. Well, the Creeveys  _had_ been his friends, Draco reminded himself. A hard thing to remember when they had wanted to kill him so badly, but it would be different for Harry, even now.  
  
“Dennis isn’t going to be talking to you anymore,” Harry said quietly. “Did you talk to him?”  
  
“Not so he could hear.” Creevey was focusing more on Harry now, and Draco was just as glad. It meant he wasn’t glaring at Draco, for a start. “But I was there, part of him. Near him.” Harry just nodded as though that made sense. “I could hear what he was thinking. What he was feeling. He wanted the Malfoys gone because they were such opponents of Muggleborns. And I knew that would make my brother feel good.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes again. Draco could only watch him and wonder what he was thinking. Mostly,  _Draco_ was thinking that he didn’t know how Harry could continue talking to someone who had as good as admitted that he wanted Draco dead.  
  
*  
  
Harry could feel a dull throbbing beneath his breastbone.  _So that was it. It wasn’t one of the ghosts going mad that made them attack Narcissa, or even Colin losing control. It was that Dennis spent so much time thinking about Colin and what he wanted that his desires influenced him._  
  
Harry gently pushed away the thought. Dennis couldn’t be arrested for something that technically wasn’t a crime, and he already  _was_ under arrest in a way that ought to prevent him from interacting with Colin again. Harry’s task now was to ensure that Colin could have some measure of peace instead of living over his horrible memories, or his brother’s horrible memories, or the memories of the ghosts trapped with him.  
  
Harry looked up and held out a hand. Colin drifted towards him, looking unsure. Scared.  
  
 _I don’t know everything about being the Master of Death, but surely some of it ought to be about bringing peace to tortured souls_. Harry breathed out hard and said, “Most of you is trapped by the Bloody Baron—your soul and the ghosts that joined you. But I want you to remember something in case you get loose again.”  
  
Colin only stared at him with big eyes. Then he blurted, “Get loose again? What?”  
  
 _His memories might already be fading._ Harry hoped so. Whether it was the Bloody Baron’s confinement that made them go or Colin’s own transition into the endlessness Esther had described, either would be better than what he was feeling right now.  
  
“You’re your own person,” Harry told him quietly. “You’re your own force of will. The thoughts of your brother and the ghosts mingled with you are incredibly powerful. I know. But you can fight free of them.” He reached out and swished his hands down once, thinking about the haunted house he had visited the other day. There had been a ghost trapped there, one Harry had managed to free and send on his way. “I’m going to try and give you your will back.”  
  
There was a particular direction he had to work, a key he had to twist in a lock. He had managed it with that other ghost. Harry wasn’t sure he would manage it with Colin. But he wanted to try.  
  
 _It ought to be easier with Colin, since I knew him,_ Harry thought, and looked up, and held Colin’s eyes. He concentrated on the fun-loving boy he remembered, whose passion was photography, and who had wanted to fight Death Eaters even if he wasn’t sure what it meant, and had hero-worshipped Harry and loved his little brother—  
  
There was a deep sensation through the center of Harry’s chest, as though he had really wrapped his hands around a key and turned it. Then Colin floated back from him, one hand fluttering up to rest on his chest. He looked shocked.  
  
Harry could already feel a difference in the air around him, less cold. He looked at Colin and whispered, “I couldn’t summon all of you. Part of you is in captivity with the Bloody Baron and always will be. But that part of you is the one attached to the mad ghosts, and the past since you died. If you can remember your life…”  
  
“I can be free,” said Colin, and he lifted his misty hands to his face.  
  
Harry looked politely away. He thought he had no idea what Colin was feeling right now, what he  _could_ be feeling.  
  
“I don’t want to be here,” Colin said suddenly. “I don’t want to see Malfoy again.”  
  
“Then you don’t need to,” said Harry, and held out his hand. The air in front of him grew, at least to his sight, bright and white, the color of the version of King’s Cross where he had met Dumbledore. “Like I said, it will only be part of you that goes free, but it’s the better part.”  
  
Colin gave him a single intense glance, and turned to face the light. He didn’t move, but he and the light merged, growing bright enough that Harry’s eyes hurt, and he had to look down.  
  
Then he was gone.  
  
 _That part of him,_ Harry thought, and swallowed, lifting his hands to allow the magic he had gathered to depart. He was tired now, shaking. He knew what he had spoken was true, including all the insights he’d had about how Dennis had influenced Colin and how part of Colin was trapped with the Bloody Baron while the rest was now free. He just didn’t know where that knowledge had come from, or what had spoken it through him.   
  
“Harry?”  
  
And he could turn away from the magnificence and the fear, both, and bury his head in a warm, living shoulder, and feel himself encircled by the arms of someone concerned about him. Harry sighed and dug further into Draco. Draco’s heart was beating, slowly, but beating. He was alive.  
  
As was Harry himself, in the end. He had to master his powers, but he was still living, and he wasn’t going to join the Bloody Baron in admiring ghosts more than humans.  
  
Draco didn’t ask questions. Maybe he didn’t care that much about the answers, but he also seemed to realize how much Harry needed simple contact right now. He rocked him back and forth, even after Harry knew he could have broken away and stood on his own.  
  
He  _could_ have. He just didn’t want to.  
  
When Draco’s tight grip grew anxious, though, Harry leaned back and looked up at him. Draco’s eyes widened, and his mouth curved in a tentative smile. Harry nodded to him.  
  
He didn’t have to pretend with Draco. He didn’t have to hide. He had saved Draco’s life, and Draco—had changed. He had presented himself as bait for the Bard with complete trust in Harry, trust that had been slightly misplaced. He had made mistakes, but he had also fought back, and survived, and even done the impossible: got along with Harry’s friends.  
  
There might be things about being the Master of Death that Harry could never share with Draco, but he didn’t think he could really share them with anyone living; that was the thing. What  _mattered_ was that he was glad he had Draco there as part of the living people he knew, and who drew him back to his own world.  
  
“He’s gone,” Harry finally said. “Part of him. And I think I’m ready to go inside.” He leaned forwards and kissed Draco.  
  
Draco sighed into the kiss, and his heartbeat increased. Harry smiled and held him there, kissing, until Draco finally broke away with a panting gasp and raced straight towards the back door of Grimmauld Place without looking back.  
  
But also not too fast, Harry knew.  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and saw the white light of King’s Cross Station one last time. He could imagine Colin getting on a train, if he wanted.  
  
And he could also imagine what was going to happen once he got inside.  
  
He raced after Draco.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
